Another pheasant

Our neighbor Bernard stopped by tonight and delivered a pheasant. It's one that was shot on Saturday. It still has all its feathers and all its entrails. Last year he gave us one and I got the people at the market who sell and prepare chickens to pluck it for me. I wanted to pay them, but they wouldn't let me. This year I'm embarrassed to go ask them again. If Bernard is going to give us a pheasant every year, I'm going to have to learn how to pluck and clean them myself. I guess this is the year. I haven't taken a picture of the thing yet.

We spent the day cooking. Walt made a beautiful pumpkin pie. He also made cranberry-orange relish. I cooked a big pot of greens and a cornbread. Tomorrow I have to make the cornbread into dressing, with onion, sage, parsley, and red and green bell peppers.

Today on my walk with Collette I took more pictures with my new camera, a Canon Powershot S70. I'm pretty pleased with these, though I'm having trouble getting used to the new camera. As always, click on one of the pictures below to see a larger version.

Here's the beginning of the walk along the gravel road out into the vineyard. The weather is cold and crisp right now. This was at about 9:00 a.m. and is just a few dozen steps from the house.


After cutting through a stand of trees, walking down the edge of a vineyard, and then walking a way down a paved road that has 5 or 6 houses along it, we turn off on a dirt road that runs through some woods and down a hill. It's like walking through a tunnel on a bed of leaves. If you look closely, you can see Collette on the road ahead of me.

At the bottom of the hill, we walk through another stand of trees. This is somebody's yard, but the people seem to have moved out, or at least gone away. For about a month now, there's been no car parked in the driveway, and the house is all shuttered morning and afternoon.


Then we walk up this road back toward the rue de la Renaudière, where our house is. This shot is looking back, after we've walked up the slight hill to this point. We often see deer along this road.


And here is the rue de la Renaudière, and we are walking back up the hill toward the house. The hill is steep and this is where we see the rust-colored slugs as well as deer and woodpeckers and crows and big hawks.


It's a nice neighborhood. The walk is a loop about two miles long.