Looking west at sunrise, late October

It's supposed to be sunny and warm for the next few days.

I'm headed to Intermarché this morning to pick up some raw choucroute (French sauerkraut) that I ordered and plan to cook this week, along with all the meats we enjoy having as part of our choucroute garnie. To my way of thinking, it's a bad sign that raw (uncooked but salt cured) choucroute is now only available if you order it ahead of time. Until now, it was a standard item that was available for purchase at the charcuterie counter at Intermarché at this time of year. I buy a good amount when I buy it. It freezes well.

Our neighbors' summer place out in the country

Yesterday morning we went back over to the neighbors' maison de campagne — we used to call those "summer cottages" in North Carolina — to see if we could find the eggs and soup the neighbor said she had accidentally left behind when she and her mother left the day before to drive back up to Blois, where they live. I don't know how old the house is, but I know that the current neighbor's mother and father bought the place about 50 years ago. They told us that only have the roof still had roof tiles on it; the people who were moving out took the rest of the tiles with them. It also had dirt floors, at least in part. The house sits on some six acres of land, much of it wooded.

The current (part-time) neighbor has now inherited the house. She, her husband, and their their children and grand-children come down here maybe 10 or 12 times a year (more often in summer) and spend a few days here, or even a week or two, at a time. Her father died three or four years ago at the age of 94. Her mother doesn't drive, so since then  has depended on her daughters or grandchildren to drive her down to Saint Aignan. The house has a fairly big bedroom, a big eat-in kitchen, and a decent-sized living dining room on the ground floor. Also, the attic was long ago converted into living space. There's one private bedroom up there, but no plumbing of any kind. Most of the space is a dormitory where visiting friends and relatives can sleep when they come here. In summer, most of the action takes place outdoors. They often have big gatherings of friends and relatives out there, and large catered meals.

A few months ago, the family threw one such party (100 or so guests) to celebrate their mother's/grandmother's 90th birthday. We were invited, and when I was talking to the honoree she told me that this little house in Saint-Aignan is the one she and her late husband could really call their own, because they didn't inherit it but picked it out themselves and had it fixed it up back in the 1970s.

Just above is a Google Maps view of the family house where the grandmother lives up in Blois. She and her husband inherited it when his father died. It's right on the street but has a big back yard. The house itself is big — they raised half a dozen children there.

Our hamlet in autumn

Our hamlet is made up of 9 houses occupied by about a dozen full-time residents. Six of those people are older couples, including us. The others who live here are a young couple with one young child and a single woman who has two children. The other houses in the hamlet are occupied part-time by people whose primary residences are in big towns like Blois, Nevers, and the Paris suburbs. You can see three of the houses I'm describing, including ours, in the photo below It's next to a big lone conifer that grows in our back yard.

Our neighbor who I ran into yesterday out in the vineyard, when I was out walking the dog, left the hamlet yesterday with her ninety-year-old mother to return to Blois. In the afternoon, Walt got a text message from her saying that in their rush to hit the road, they had left a carton of eggs on their kitchen table, along with a container of soup they had bought at the supermarket. She said they had also accidentally left an electric radiator on somewhere in the house (she didn't say where).

Would we go get the eggs and soup the and keep them for ourselves, she asked, and would we see about the radiators? Of course we would. We went over there late yesterday but we couldn't find any eggs or soup. We forgot to feel the radiators to see if any of them were warm. So we'll have to walk back over there today and look around some more. It's just across the road and we've had their keys for 20 years now.

Maples

The weather yesterday was warm-ish and skies were blue. It was a nice afternoon for a walk with Tasha. And for sitting a spell out on the terrace and just relaxing. I snapped this photo of our maple trees while I was out there. It's supposed to rain all day today. After all, we need the rain, the weather forecasters tell us. Welcome to November.

I ran into the neighbor out in the vineyard this morning. She was walking her dog. I asked about the mower that's en panne. She said it was just a broken belt, so no big deal. The only problem is that it's a mower part that has to be ordered, and it might take a month for it to get here.

One vineyard picture a day

I got my flu and Covid vaccinations yesterday afternoon. Then I had a really bad night trying to get some sleep. Now my inflamed wrist is acting up again. I wonder if that could be related to getting the shots. Time will tell, I suppose. I'll go see the doctor again next week and see what he says and/or prescribes.