“Yarding”

After I said yesterday that I've been spending most of my time indoors lately, I ended up out in the yard during the day. With no rain so far this week, the ground and the autumn leaves had dried out enough to make it possible to do some work out there. I'll call it "yarding" — it's not really gardening. Rain is supposed to start again this afternoon and we're bracing for yet another wet November weekend.

At least I got the leaves up off the gravel driveway. Many more will fall over the next
few days and weeks, so I'll be out there raking again when weather permits.

In a lot of ways, this is the prettiest time of the year. This autumn, though, it has just been too wet much of the time. Yesterday, I raked up leaves and covered one garden plot with them. The leaves keep weeds from taking over the plot — unless we have abnormally cold weather, weeds will keep growing all winter — and then I will till them into the soil in March so that we can plant the garden in May.

There's Walt out mowing the yard yesterday morning. In November...
It's emerald green thanks to all the rain.

Picking up leaves is the activity of the season, but mowing? Walt was out mowing the yard yesterday morning. He hopes it will be the last time in 2012 that he'll have to get the mower out of the garden shed. He says he's mowed the yard in November in past years, and even later than November 8, but it seems strange.

A week or two ago, we put together a big burn pile. In the background, you can
the plot that's now covered with maple leaves, and on the right the greens plot.

In the afternoon I went out with the dog and was able to take pictures in the vineyard for the first time in a while. There was enough light to make some of the pictures come out, though many were too dark and blurry. That's the way it is this time of year. We go out for our dog walks early in the morning, as soon as there's at least partial daylight, and we go out again around sundown. Neither time of day is ideal for photography, especially when low clouds diminish the light even further.

The view out the kitchen window — no wonder we enjoy
spending time in the kitchen...

Today we're going up to Blois to go shopping. It's about 40 minutes north. We have some things on our list that we can't find locally. Blois — or its south suburb Vineuil, actually — has a ZAC (Zone d'Activités Commerciales) or shopping district with big-box stores that carry a much wider range of merchandise than the stores and shops around Saint-Aignan. I have some cooking projects in the planning stages, and we have a few home improvement projects in the works. We need supplies for all those.