The big news in France...

...is cold weather. I just came in from a walk with the dog. We cut it kind of short this morning. There's a very fine, light snow falling, and the temperature is -4ºC, or +25ºF. Luckily, there's no wind.

This is proving to be a very cold winter by Saint-Aignan standards. Like last summer, which was consistently warmer and sunnier than most, this winter is colder and snowier than what we have gotten used to.

Today's lows — ours is the -5ºC toward the center of the country,
between all the minus ones and minus fours. That's +23ºF for us.

The forecast for this morning — Saint-Aignan is on the
leading edge of the snow that's moving in from the west.
It started snowing at about 8:00 a.m.

I really ought to go down to town and take some pictures of the snow-covered rooftops of the houses, the church, and the château. But it's too cold, and the hill down to the main road is too steep and slippery. So you'll have to use your imagination.

Afternoon temperatures inland will be right around freezing today.

The snow will move on inland, but we're under it all day.

Today I'm trying my hand at making that Korean cabbage specialty called Kimchi or Kim Chee. More about that later.

Walt is making a Galette des Rois, the special almond-filled, puff-pastry cake that people in France eat on January 6, which is a religious holiday called The Epiphany. It celebrates the day, in legend, when the three kings or wise men arrived in Bethlehem from the East to bring gifts to baby Jesus.

Here's Thursday: more snow.

We are all closed in and the furnace (boiler, actually) is running on high to heat up the big cast-iron radiators that warm all the rooms of the house. Once the house warms up again, after the overnight chill burns off, we'll turn off the boiler and start a fire in the wood-burning stove. That will heat the part of the house where we spend afternoons and evenings.

And Friday doesn't look much better.

The cold weather is supposed to last through the weekend, with snow about every day. But then the weather forecasters often predict snow (or rain) for days after it snows (or rains) just once. Half the time, they are wrong, it seems to me, and the weather improves.

To think we used to come to France for vacations in January!