To quote my friend and neighbor Martha, "Ain’t technology grand?"

I have added a spiffy link to the sidebar on the left-hand side of this page. Scroll down carefully. It’s there. Honest. It’s all in type, so it may be a little hard to see: it appears right after the end of the handy list of Categories…

If you click on this link, which says something like "Subscribe to Per Diem Updates by Email" (in fact, that’s exactly what it says—just another indication of my irrepressible modesty, if not of my manifest anxiety about being wrong), you will be taken to a page on the Feedburner.com site.

This asks for your email address. They will then send a confirmation email with a link in it, and once you click on that, you will be "subscribed."

Then you never again have to read another falsely timorous, excruciatingly self-conscious, and embarrassingly unfunny reminder from me that there is a new essay on the blog (doesn’t the use of "essay" and "blog" with mutual reference to one another constitute an irresolvable internal inconsistency not unrelated to oxymoron?).

You can unsubcribe any time. It’s very easy to do, I’m told—just 39 steps and two forms to fill out.

Really not.

Just another thoughtful service from moi.

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I am besieged (there must be two, maybe three of you) by requests for photos while we’re here in France. It ain’t easy. I don’t shoot a lot, for one thing, and for two I’m a persnickety, meticulous, if not obsessive worker. So usually no photo appears [snap] just like that.

But this was easy. I shot a few shots just outside my door. No muss, no fuss.

These images are all, as the French say, "nature," which is not to say they’re something other than natural—I mean they’re photos of flowers for God’s sake—but they are unadulterated: unedited and unchanged, more or less direct from the memory card of my camera. This also means I am disinclined to respond to critiques from the photo-geeks and other geeks out there. These are not optimal photographically speaking… not ready for prime time. But they’re more than good enough.

You have to go to the bertha Web site to see the mini-portfolio:

http://bertha.com

I made it easy, on the home page, click on the link (the photo or the words) with the picture of the flower.

What you’ll see are common hollyhocks, which abound in the village in every imaginable hue, from deep purple (almost black) to white. The three specimens here are what, as I say, are 15 feet from our door. The other shots are of what we call oleander (which are even closer to the door, in huge pots), and what the French call (and I prefer) laurier rose. Either way, for you botanical and Latin freaks, that’s Nerium oleander. The hollyhocks are Alcea rosea. In the background of one of the oleander shots you can even see the white slatted bench made famous in my by now world-renowned obsequies for the former owner of our little house, M. Jean-Michel Braunstein < http://perdiem.bertha.com/2007/06/2007june13wedne.html >.

That’s it. No more for today. No. No questions. Please.

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