At the supermarket, the only problem was figuring out how to get a cart. In France, they lock them up, I suppose for fear that customers will steal them. I had failed to note this cart arrangement in past trips, so like one of the Three Stooges, I tried wrestling a cart free for a minute before a kind lady explained the 10-franc trick. After shopping, I could not for the life of me figure out how to re-lock my cart to the others. Turned out that I was trying to lock my blue cart to the queue of red ones.
Blues only go with blues and reds with reds.
You won't find that in any guidebooks. Over the next two weeks, we settled into the easy rhythms of a French vacation. A local donkey appeared every morning at the low back fence. Jamie fell in love with the sweet doe-eyed beast and would feed him fresh carrots. He grew lovely little strawberries, five different kinds of salad greens, several varieties of tomatoes, fresh flowers and sweet melons.