Not gardening, sunbathing.

It's still summer-warm here in the south-west.

The sun is strong in a Simpson's sky, pale blue with wispy cloud.

The shade of the lime tree creeps closer to the pool, across a narrow stretch of grass and over a patch of river stones and washed gravel.

But it will not reach the pool's edge, as the sun arcs towards the west.

Overhead, a bird of prey circles lazily on the up-drafts. Keen-eyed and head down, it issues a mournful call, something between a whistle and a cry.

At ground level, there is hardly a breath of wind. The weathercock on the apex of the barn roof is perfectly still, pointing north.

Then, suddenly, comes the crack of gun fire from a thicket beyond my neighbour, the widow Rossi's house. The shots are no more than three hundred yards away. It's the opening day of the season.

I'm reminded we haven't seen our pair of pheasants for a couple of months. They delighted us with their occasional forays into the garden after we moved here in May. I hope they are still alive.

Around the house, there is plenty of work to do. Yesterday I decided to prune some bushy shrubs growing out of control at the southern corner of the barn, by the road leading to Remy's winery.

What I thought was a morning job is proving otherwise. It's going to take days. The more material I removed, the more I discovered. There was an under-story jungle of dead branches, beneath a canopy of prolific shoots.

I'm mulching the branches and disposing of them under a sprawling Leylandii pine at the bottom of the garden. The leaves and stalks go into large cardboard moving boxes which I take to the local dechetterie in Port Sainte Marie.

The dechetterie provides a convenient, free service. In Australia, it's called a tip, and it costs you to go there.

Whilst pruning, I decided to remove my shirt. This was a mistake. I paid the price when I got a big horse-fly bite on my back. In the heat of work, I never even felt him land or bite. Now I've got an itchy welt the size of a 50 cent piece.

In the buzzing and biting squadrons, mozzies might be spitfires but horse-flies are B-52 bombers. They are huge and scary.

So today, I decided to suspend gardening and instead spend a lazy day by the pool, reading David Niven's The Moon's a Balloon, sun-baking and dipping into the glassy, aquamarine water.

I have turned the colour of tobacco.

Haven't been this brown since my boyhood at Noosa.