The road through the hamlet

Can you see the airplane flying above us? — Our Citroën rolls through the hamlet just three or four times a month. Mostly we drive the Peugeot when we run errands. The Citroën is our garbage truck, though; we load it up once or twice a month with all our recyclables and haul them to a local drop-off recycling station. It has a bigger trunk.

Looking west (above left) and then east toward our house (above right) from the same spot out in the vineyard.

The dirt road through the vineyard turns into a paved lane starting at our house and running down to the river road, which leads upriver to Saint-Aignan or downriver to Montrichard (and beyond, in both cases). That's our Blois neighbors' maison de campagne above right.

Trees and trunks

Not a forest fire, just a sunrise (left) ; the same sunrise seen through poplar trees (right)

Troncs de vignes : a certain number of the grape vines die every year and are replaced

A twisty apple tree ; a pine cone, called une pomme de pin in French

December weather 15 years ago

These are some photos I took during a morning walk in the vineyard on December 10, 2010.

As you can see, it was cold on that date 15 years ago. It's much warmer today. It's raining this morning and there's no ice or snow to be seen. Actually, we are experiencing what the weather forecasters are calling une vague de douceur — "a warmth wave." You can't really call it une vague de chaleur, but it's the wintertime equivalent.

The frozen puddles on the road through the vineyard remind me of eggs cooked sunny side up (or of raw oysters). In the picture on the right just above, it looks like somebody had been through with a snow plow, leaving little piles of ice on the shoulder of the road.

Pink flowers in December

These are photos I took on December 5 — four days ago. We still have the stray rose. We also have, on the right, the Bergénia flowers that seem to bloom year-round. They are called saxifrages by people around here, which is their family name. In English they are sometimes known as "elephant ears" because of the shape of their large leaves. I'm not sure what the reddish berries or buds are. Maybe laurel.

A rose is a rose is a rose...