When Nicky left me here in the apartment and went home last evening, our plan for the next day (today, Sunday) was for me to walk up to her house at 8:30 in the morning and go to the beach with her, Mick, and her sister. Saturday evening I did laundry, unpacked, settled in, and wrote my blog post for Saturday. I finally went to sleep around 12:30. This morning when I woke up it was still dark and I thought I heard light rain falling. My iPhone said it was 6:30, so I got up. It was, indeed, raining. As I made my coffee and got dressed, the light rain turned into a downpour, complete with thunder. Our patio became a lake. The wind banged my windows around and sent rain misting into the rooms, so I had to shut them all. I went downstairs and brought in some towels that had been put on the patio to dry last night and hung them inside the downstairs apartment, which is empty till this Saturday. I emailed Nicky that I would not be coming up to the house at 8:30 to go to the beach!   To make the most of this rainy day opportunity, I decided to make some art. I pulled out all my stuff and set up at the kitchen table. I chose to work on my small book – I painted the pages when I was in Verquilleux with Margaret. Before I left her studio I had chosen a small number of a variety of painted papers and brought them with me. I based the composition on two postcards of mosaic work by Paolo Racagni that I had seen in Paray le Monial, and I sketched a beginning composition on a couple of painted pages in the book. I also used postcards that I had collected in Lyon. One spread (two facing pages equals one spread) is close to finished, the other pages are just beginnings done by using up my scraps from that spread. I’ve shown you some photos. As I worked the rain stopped and the sun came out. Actually, I had been looking forward to the whole day being rainy – guess I need a rest – and to making art all day. But once the sun came out, I felt the call to go out exploring. Packing up my art stuff, I left the apartment around noon and just wandered with no goal other than seeing something of this village. I stayed out till about 1:30 and took lots and lots of photos and began to familiarize myself. Still much more to see, but at least I got my feet wet. Hey! What was I thinking? Why didn’t I go out and stand in the big puddle in our patio and take a photo of my feet?!! Darn, lost opportunity. Too late now, the lake is dried up. Phooey! Back at the apartment, hungry and tired, the first thing I did was eat lunch – bread with smoked salmon (M & K have gotten me into the habit), and apple, and some chocolate – simple, but I loved it. Now I’m here working on this post. I’m staying at the apartment because I told Nicky that I would go with her to pick Cathy up at the bus stop and that we would go to the grocery store on the way home to stock up on supplies for the month. I now have a better idea of what is needed. Below are photos from my walk around Bormes les Mimosas – guess they speak for themselves. And…the best news of the day…Cathy has arrived!! She got here around 3:30. Turns out that Nicky never did stop and pick me up to go with her to collect Cathy from the bus stop, so we weren’t able to go to the grocery store. Having almost nothing here, we decided to head out walking in hopes of finding a market someplace and buy some food. We walked down the hill about 20 minutes and found a small, but decent little place and bought some necessities, like paper towels and shampoo and such, and some food for Monday, yogurt, apples, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese – simple and easy things for lunch after our first morning of working in the garden, which will begin at 7:30 a.m. Then we hiked back up the hill with our treasure – it was sunny and hot and we were dripping with sweat by the time we returned. Then we sat on our patio and had our first supper together. Sorry I don’t have more photos of our outing and our evening, but Cathy is totally fried from traveling and we have had so much to talk about. Tomorrow we will take more photos of both of us and our adventures. Till then!