Fields, Saignon

 Lovely muted winter colors

Winter colors, below Saignon

Winter colors, Saignon

Three views from Saignon

 To the Southwest

 To the North

To the North. Find the woman.

Saignon January, 2019

Even on a very cold January day you can find color in Provence.

Saignon

Winter colors, Saignon

Cold field, Saignon

Saignon

The road going across the center of the photo is our morning walk through the fields.

Bonnieux

Farmer Bob's wheat looks good this year.

Fields, Bonnieux bike path

 The wheat is almost ready here. I love the colors.

Saignon

Lavender and lavandin, Saignon

 Our hosts gave us a lesson in lavender this year. The field above is the classic Provencal lavender. Lovely scent and true lavender color. Rather small plants with smaller flowers. The field below is lavandin, a variety of lavender, probably a hybrid. It has longer flowers and grows much larger. It produces 50% more oil than lavender but contains more camphor, better for colds but a little more medicinal in scent. It is also a bit more towards blue. It is sterile and does not propagate from seed, like it's cousin, only cuttings. It is probably more profitable to grow but produces an inferior oil.

Wheat field, Saignon

Everyone I've shown this to says it's too grainy. (An old film shooter's joke.)

Sunflower field, Apt. Shot from Saignon.

This is a huge field on the road down to Apt from Saignon. Most years it has been planted to wheat or grain, but this year it was magnificent in yellow and green.

Field colors, Bonnieux

Lovely blue-green grasses over here.

Field colors, Bonnieux bike path, west

Hay bales, Bonnieux bike path, west

In my youth I spent a summer on a working ranch in Kirby, Montana. The hardest work we did was bucking bales of alfalfa onto a sled and then stacking those same bales at the end of the field. They were quite heavy (75 lbs./34 kg is what the foreman said) and it was very hot. I rejoiced for ranch hands and farm workers everywhere when the huge round baling system came in. Imagine my horror when I saw these. On second glance I realized the they were far too big to be thrown and stacked by hand labor. Whew.

Lavender field, Saignon

Poppies in fields, Saignon bike path