Down the road, evening.

A huge green and gold cloisonné dragonfly with transparent wings darts back and forth along the verge, then settles, cruciform, on the crumpled brown paper leaf of a maize plant.

Up the road, morning (Sunday)

We take a stick and a straw shopping basket for foraging, and I come back with scratched and purple hands. Mirabelles, wilding and crab apples, blackberries. The sloes can wait.

Down the road, evening.

Sun still lighting the maize tops, but it's cold. Where are the swallows? The last garage brood only fledged today; one typically hit the window, but bounced off, seemingly unharmed.

Up the road, afternoon.

Still some mirabelles on the trees, and those that have fallen, deep yellow among the barley stubble and ungleaned hormed heads, are being plundered, not by wasps but honey bees.

Down the road, evening.

The young Limousin bull is in a nearby field, with his girlfriends. He is red-gold, solid and quiet as the landscape, and raises his head to watch us go past.

Up the road, afternoon.

I know that Marcelle is sad with loss and waning, yet her garden is filled with wine-rich red and pink as joy dahlias, overhung by branches heavy with apples.

Up the road, afternoon.

The blackberries are so sweet, Molly is quite happy to share them. I must buy sugar and make a special trip to collect some for jelly, along with some apples.

Wooded path, next to the main approach to the Chateau de Bogard, morning.

Molly insisted we stop, I'm glad she did. The chateau appears across its reedy fishing pool, small in the landscape, in low-contrast light, symmetrical and graceful, beautiful but unassuming.

Up the road, afternoon.

White butterflies over and around the field of feed-cabbages, and white gulls over and around the tractor harrowing the stubble of the wheatfield, look like torn scraps of white paper.

Notre Dame du Hault chapel, Trédaniel.

We walk down the avenue of sycamores, carefully past the sand and rocks where adders live, and into the woods to the holy well, in search of Words of Power.

Up the road, afternoon.

Hot, and the whine of Tom's tile-cutter follows me.

"Bloke in the paper" warns Marcel sagely " cut two fingers off."

We return, come out again in the cool, green-gold evening.

Up the road, right at the T, afternoon.

We visit the four sleek donkeys, the peeling brown gate and mauve hydrangeas, the nasturtia trailing through the hacked cypress hedge, and take the dusty track up to the watertower.

Down the road, morning.

Hurry the breakfast washing up, we want to catch the early light on the wheat harvest that we heard in the night, and the grassheads and spiderwebs are silver crisp.

Trédaniel plan d'eau, afternoon.

A tiny black damselfly with bright blue trim perches on a tiny five-petalled yellow flower. I observe quite happily that I don't know the precise name of either insect or plant.

Up the road, afternoon.

The black patches on the road surfaces are beginning to melt; cracked blisters appear on the surface with a glossy glint below, and pawprints and treadmarks appear where we've walked.

Hill above Hénon, afternoon.

Honeysuckle swathes ripening blackberries, the distant sea is a blue band, from which the wind blows thin through the purple cotton of my shirt. Down the hill, a donkey brays.

Trédaniel plan d'eau, afternoon

The man directs a compact camera as his teenage daughter handles her rod awkwardly. On a bench, an older boy sits, the scent of his cigarette drifting across the water.