News and weather bulletins

I awoke at 5:30 this morning to the sound of wind gusting under the eaves of the house and hard rain beating against the metal shutter on the bedroom windows and pounding on the plexi-glass awning just below. The rain gauge is nearly full and it has just started pouring again at 7:30 a.m.

March showers bring... March flowers. And lookhow high the grass is getting. Those planter boxes
are begging to have some impatiens planted in them.

The weather report on the radio just said today would be a typical March day, with hard downpours of rain — les célèbres giboulées de mars — and fierce winds. Gone is the nice sunny weather we had Friday and yesterday morning. The rain came back in at mid-afternoon yesterday.

We actually got out and dug in the dirt a little yesterday morning. I got some weeding done in the plot out front into which I transplanted a rose bush a few weeks ago. The transplanted rose is now starting to grow new branches and leaves. Moving it didn't kill it, in other words. I was afraid it would.

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March skies at La Renaudière

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Today would have been my father's 82nd birthday. He passed away in 1990. It's hard to believe it's been nearly 20 years.

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This week's winds brought down some big dead trees.
They fell right across our path along the edge of the woods.

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Yesterday France lost to Wales in the final match of the Six Nations rugby tournament. Wales won the game by 29 to 12 and is the champion. The French team would have had to beat the Welsh team by 20 points to wrest the rugby championship away from them.

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Here's that goat willow tree (Salix caprea). I posted a picture
of its catkins and new leaves yesterday.

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Today is the final round of voting in France's latest municipal election contests. Thirty-six thousand mayors are being elected in cities, towns, and villages around the country, along with many thousands of town and village councilors.

In Paris, it looks like the Socialist incumbent, Bertrand Delanoë, will be re-elected. In Marseille, the right-wing candidate, a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP party, is favored slightly over his Socialist Party opponent.

Some predicted a Socialist landslide in the mayoral elections around the country, because Sarkozy's approval ratings have been sagging lately in all the polls. The first round of voting didn't indicate a massive rejection of Sarkozy's party's candidates, but more than 40% of the voters didn't go to polls last week. If many of those voters turn out today, the results could be very different from last week's.

14 March 2008, looking northwest

The centrist MoDem party, headed by former presidential candidate François Bayrou, has allied itself with the Socialist candidates in some towns and cities, but with Sarkozy's UMP candidates in others. Bayrou himself is not assured of carrying the mayor's race in his city of Pau, in the Pyrenees. The centrists, like the abstainers, will play a big role in determining today's results.

Mayoral candidates run with a slate of potential town councilors (called a liste électorale). To win the election a candidate and his list have to win a majority of the votes in either the first or second round of voting. Those who don't win in the first round usually form alliances and coalitions with smaller parties' candidates and slates, constituting a new liste.

In cases where the politicians can't agree to a coalition and three or more listes are still on the ballot for the second round of voting, if no candidate wins an outright majority, the town councilors are apportioned by the percentage of the vote their liste ended up winning. Then the new town council elects a mayor.

It's a fairly elaborate system, as French systems often are.

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14 March 2008, looking east

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I made meatballs in a tomato sauce with carrots, mushrooms, celery, and onions for lunch yesterday. Over pasta, it was delicious.

Today we are having fish fillets and asparagus spears, with a mussels-and-cream sauce. Anybody who shows up by 12:30 can partake. Wear your rain gear if you come to Saint-Aignan.