Sunflowers, Pigeons, and Shakespeare

Lauzerte (we're somewhere in the middle of that)

I have described Lauzerte to people as "a medieval village on top of a hill surrounded by vineyards and fields of sunflowers." This is no exaggeration, and the past few weeks, especially with the hot weather, have seen the flowers turn dry and saggy. Luckily, I snagged some photos of the fields during one of our hikes around the countryside, just before they really turned ugly.

Besides taking their seeds for munching, their oil is harvested and very common in the grocery stores alongside the many other types of vegetable oils for sale. They're happy plants:

While on that same hike, we came across a funny looking building:

After some research, Bridgette later found that these were used as pigeon houses 200+ years ago, which explains the sparse, thin, tall, openings and a simple interior. The farmers would use the pigeons for food (yum?), but also for their droppings as fertilizer. Now, why raise the coop off the ground on mushroom-capped columns? To prevent your local prey from taking your delicious, feathery dinner! (The mushroom caps prevented clever climbers from outsmarting the farmers.)

Lauzerte features much live entertainment, as we've mentioned before. Recently, a travelling theater group, Antic Disposition, came through the square and put on Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," which we happily took a seat for and enjoyed on a beautifully calm August evening, right outside our door.

That play is "stupid," as one of our new British friends remarked. And I'd have to agree that it achieves a special level of silliness, and one that goes to explain where Brits get their unique sense of humor. This same person also commented (something along these lines) on her fellow Brits as looking completely ridiculous lining up for tickets before the play's start. "ah, you can tell the Brits are out once you start seeing a queue forming. Look at them looking like idiots, all standing there waiting while no one's even at the table to sell them anything..." (The French don't know the concept of lines. You should have seen the mad rush at church when it came time for communion. Everyone piled out of the pews at once like it was a free-for-all. I was astounded, and a bit scared of being trampled) Regardless, the play is completely entertaining, hilarious, and the production we saw was very well done for a travelling, outdoor group.