Sunday sunrise, quiet days

Sunrise yesterday was beautiful. A wet-weather system was going by to the north of Saint-Aignan (have you heard about all the terrible weather they've been having up in England?). Being on the calm edge of the turbulent weather, we had just enough clouds to make for beautiful morning skies as the sun came up.

Our house, called Les Bouleaux, seen yesterday morning
from the far corner of the back yard

I went out with the dog just before 8 a.m. That's the normal time, but on Sundays it's important not to be late because the hunters show up at nine o'clock sharp. There are only two or three of them who hunt in and around the vineyard these days, and they know what they are going, but still... I don't want to be out there with the dog when they are shooting guns.

November sunrise over the Renaudière vineyard

La Renaudière, our hamlet outside Saint-Aignan, is very quiet these days. Five of the nine houses are empty at this time of year. Summertime neighbors have decamped to their wintertime stomping grounds — one couple to Blois and two others to the Paris region. One house in the hamlet is for sale.

You can see three houses in this photo, one of which is empty for the winter.

One house in the hamlet is occupied by a single man whose health is shaky. The woman across the street is now 92, and we never see her any more. Her daughter, along with the mayor and her husband who live next door to her, are the only neighbors we see, and usually just when they drive by on their way down to the village or into town.

Callie is hunting some critter in a pile of leaves that we raked and swept up over the
weekend. Lucky for us, the leaves didn't fly away in Saturday night's high winds.

It's quiet and peaceful. We see vineyard workers nearly every day, and hunters on Sundays. A crew hired by the electric company (ERDF) came out last week and cut down a lot of brambles, bushes, and saplings that were growing up under the wires just outside our property. I'm not sure who pays for such work to be done — ERDF or the property owner. Either way, we're happy to have the brush cut back.