Flower power (and more)

People in the Greater Daglan Area love their flowers, their shrubs, their trees, and their vegetable gardens, and of course spring is the time of year when flower power is in full swing. All around the GDA you can find nurseries packed with flowers, as well as some fairly extravagant festivals devoted to showing off (and selling) plants.

So this morning my wife Jan and I headed out with friends Rosemary and Richard to the Fête du Fleurs, du Cheval, et de la Nature in Cazals, a bit south of Daglan in the département of the Lot. And the festival certainly lived up to its name, with seemingly endless displays of flowers, horses (and other farm animals) and nature in general.

For a two-and-a-half euro entry fee, visitors can check out some 50 exhibitors of flowers, herbs, vegetables, shrubs, plants and trees, and buy them for what seemed to us like quite reasonable prices. Here’s a look at just one of the many rows of flowers:

Stands of flowers seemed to go on forever.

We spent a few hours at the fête, and it seemed like it was teeming with visitors the whole time, with the pathways full of people:

The pathways were packed with shoppers.

Jan wanted to buy a hanging basket of flowers for our front steps, plus a selection of flowers for the beds at the side of the house. Here she is, checking out the offerings of the young lady who shows up each Sunday in Daglan for our weekly market:

Getting down to the details.

In the end, we skipped the flower basket, because we couldn’t picture what size it should be. But we did buy quite a few purple dwarf dahlias, which you can see in the bottom right of this photo, next to the yellow variety:

We finally made our choice from the flats of flowers in the lower foreground of this photo.

As promised, the fête had lots more than flowers — including a large ring with horses prancing about; pony rides for the kids; several kinds of horse-drawn carriages; and this whopping big American Percheron draft horse, which we were told weighs more than a ton:

We were warned to stay away from his hooves. No kidding!

There were also rows and rows of other farm animals and birds, from beautiful roosters to a Chinese pig to ducks and geese and donkeys, and little goats like these:

Just a few of the little goats at the show.

And then there was this beauty — a white llama which seemed typically serene, despite all the people trying to pet it:

Haughty? Or just composed?

After a (very) light lunch of things like a sausage in a baguette, a tray of French fries, and some small quiches, we headed back to Daglan. So next on the agenda comes the planting of our flowers.