07 November 2013

Views from la Renaudière

The hamlet we live in, just three kilometers (two miles) from the main square in Saint-Aignan (pop. 4,000), is called La Renaudière. I assume the name of the family who used to own the land and had their farmhouse here was named Renaud, but nobody seems to know. There's nobody named Renaud around here now, to my knowledge. We're on the high ground, which is planted in vines nowadays, on the south side of the Cher River, up above the valley.

Because we're up high, we get strong winds, sure, but we also get some nice views. We're about to lose one of them, however. Yesterday, the electric company crews hooked us up to the new underground medium-tension wires that will from now on bring current to the nine houses at La Renaudière. The old poles and wires will be taken down very soon, one worker told us.


After these poles and wires come down, the electric company will stop cutting the trees that grow up under the existing wires. This is one of the walks I take with Callie every day. We go down to the bottom of the vineyard, turn right, and then circle back toward the house. Soon the gap will fill in and we won't be able to see out over the river from then on. The woman we bought the house from nearly 11 years ago told us that in the 1980s, when she came to live here, none of the trees you see in the photo above was so tall, so she had panoramic views out over the river and the valley.


Yesterday morning, our power was cut for about three hours when something went wrong with the new ground-level transformer out back. A crew had to come and replace it before they could turn the power on again. Because I have a battery-powered tablet and a little wireless, battery-powered Bluetooth speaker, I could listen to music while I did household chores during the outage. I have the tablet sitting in a bracket mounted on the kitchen wall for when I want to watch television on it while I cook and clean.


One of the nice things about living on the edge of the vineyard is that there are no utility poles or wires of any kind for a mile or two out behind our house. That makes for good views. The last two poles that mar the view out over the vines from our house will be taken down soon. So we will lose one view, but we'll gain a better one in the bargain.

9 comments:

  1. I like your snazzy tablet holder! Very neat.

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  2. Susan, I forgot to mention the main use of the tablet in the kitchen: to call up recipes that we have on a computer, over the network. Very handy.

    Ms. Lemon, thanks.

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  3. Glad you're enjoying the tablet!

    I always love seeing photos of your kitchen!

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  4. that bracket is the best idea! did your tablet come with it? or was it an add-on? or did you do that yourself? GREAT idea. i like to watch online when i'm in the kitchen and that would be the perfect solution for me. :-)

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  5. any chance u could keep the trees trimmed out there?

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  6. I don't know if I can do that with my iPad- oh Lewis says I can. Notebooks are great for recipes- I laughed when dh told me about that use years ago, but I've stopped laughing now.

    Sorry you're losing your view, but you've still got those sunrises and sunsets. Can't have it all.

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  7. Sorry about the loss of your views, but will someone, at some point, perhaps cut them down for fire wood? Or how about taking some secateurs with you when out on a dog walk, and 'trim' any would be little saplings!

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  8. Ohio, Melinda, Vera, look at my Oranges post (10 Nov.) for responses to your comments here.

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