Yesterday I posted about wines, so today I'll post about vines. These are not photos of the vineyards around Limeray but of vineyards near Saint-Aignan. I'll limit myself to four.
Our rainfall total for January climbed up to 99 millimeters over the last two days of the month. That included one short-lived snow episode earlier. Ninety-nine millimeters equals about 4 inches, which is twice our normal monthly amount of precipitation. It's sloppy out there and the pond is overflowing.
Rain had just ended overnight on Friday when I took these photos. Everything was dripping, but the clouds had suddenly blown away and the sun was rising in a clear sky.
Callie was patiently exploring as I took the time to snap photos. She does an awful lot of sniffing out there. I'm sure deer, badgers, foxes, and who knows what other animals — maybe wild boars — are active during the overnight hours, leaving their scent scattered all around.
We had about 24 hours of steady but fairly light rain over the weekend. It finally ended Sunday around noontime. I got soaked twice on my weekend walks, and so did Callie. It's warm though — over 50ºF (11ºC) this morning before dawn. Our true winter will have lasted about three days this year, unless the weather really changes this month.
Daffodils are starting to bloom here and the birds are singing their Spring songs already. We've had very few days below freezing.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing to think that the last real cold spell we had was in February 2012. I'll have to look back in the blog, but we might have had a light snowfall in 2013, and then the one we had this past January, but those were pretty much insignificant. My collard greens are looking beautiful, even at this late date.
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