The garden, and a sudden trip plan

I took Callie out for her regular afternoon walk yesterday. On the way out, I browsed through our vegetable garden see what was happening. There are quite a few more ripe tomatoes now. The small ones are turning red, but the bigger varieties are still green. The weather is mild — not to say chilly.

Today we'll pick some Swiss chard and make a pasta/chard stir-fry dish — onions, garlic, red pepper flakes, and maybe a couple of little sausages I have in the freezer. Yesterday and the day before we ate a zucchini casserole — a gratin — with zukes from the garden. It's the season.

Sweet corn growing in the garden

After checking out the garden, Callie and I slipped through the wires of the electrified fence — it doesn't appear to be electrified right now — that protects the vines and grapes from marauding deer. We wanted to walk down the hill toward the north, through some woods. Callie gets very excited when you take her on a seldom-used path.

Wild blackberries are already starting to ripen.

At the bottom of the hill, I took a few pictures. I noticed a big tree that had blown over in the other evening's wind storm, and this morning I saw another one that had a big limb broken out of it. We were lucky not to have any wind damage the other night.

A view from the bottom of our hill, looking across the
Cher River Valley to the other side. There are sheep
in the pen behind the white house.

In late August, some friends of ours from America and from Normandy are going to be spending three days together in Paris. On the spur of the moment, I decided yesterday afternoon to buy myself a train ticket and go to Paris for part of their time there. It'll be fun. I'll spend two nights in a hotel in the Latin Quarter.

That's the nice thing about living here: I buy a 10€ train ticket, jump on a train, and be in Paris in two hours' time. Walt will stay home with Callie this time.