The view from Noyers-sur-Cher

Coquelicots

It's not easy to take pictures of red poppies on a green background with a digital camera. Or with my old digital camera, anyway. The red is so saturated that there's not much detail in the picture.

A field of red poppies in Noyers-sur-Cher,
across the river from Saint-Aignan

I drove back over to the little dead-end road (la rue des Quatre-Piliers) in Noyers yesterday morning. All went as planned, except that when I passed the last house before the road became a gravel path through a vineyard, a big German shepherd dog behind a wire fence went absolutely wild barking at me and my car. He appeared to be ferocious.

The end of the paved road, looking back down.
Notice the chimney coming up out of the ground.
Part of the house must be built into the hillside.

I drove on up and parked just where the pavement ended. There was a tractor path going off to the left, and it looked like the best place for views of both the poppies and the Saint-Aignan "skyline." So I walked out that way with my big long-lens camera.

Looking across the poppies out over
the river valley to Saint-Aignan

I heard the sound of a gas engine and then I saw an older woman, with a head full of bushy white hair, wearing a pale blue house dress, pushing her lawn-mower across a patch of land just on the other side of the field of poppies, a little lower down the hill from where I was. I could only see her from about the waist up. In a minute or two, she noticed me. I nodded bonjour.

The château de Saint-Aignan seen from
the north side of the river valley.

{Click on the pictures to see them in full size.}

I felt as if I might be trespassing. There were no Propriété Privée signs, but still. I went ahead and snapped some pictures, but I didn't want the woman behind the lawn-mower to think I was photographing her. I didn't linger.

In this wider shot, you can see both the church
and the château in Saint-Aignan

If I could have, it probably would have been good to go and talk to her. Once she heard my American accent, she probably would have been happy to know that I wanted to take some tourist shots of the poppies and the château.

12 May 2007 in Noyers-sur-Cher

But there was the noise of the lawn-mower, and there was that German shepherd between her and me. So I just got into the car and drove on off.

The parting shot (that isn't the right expression, is it?)

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