Seen around the hamlet

It's been raining here for 22 hours now, sans discontinuer as they say. It started yesterday morning at eight o'clock, just as I was getting back to the house after a walk in the vineyard with Natasha the Sheltie. I haven't checked the rain gauge yet. I hope it hasn't overflowed. When I took Tasha out for a pee a few minutes ago, it was raining harder than it did at any time yesterday. [P.S. I checked the rain gauge at 7:45. It was getting ready to overflow. I estimate we got 38 mm of rainfall — 1½ inches. That's a lot in this climate, where we would normally get about 2 inches of rain per month.}

For years I've enjoyed the view above, which is what you see when you walk around the vineyard parcels to the north and east of our hamlet. We won't have such a view soon, because trees are slowly growing up and blocking it. A few years ago, the electric company under-grounded our wires, which is a good thing. The wires used to run on poles that brought them up the hill through a break in the trees. The company periodically sent out crews to cut back the trees to keep branches from growing into or falling onto the wires and pulling them down. Bye-bye river valley views.

This weekend, Walt has posted a couple of photos like the one above. (He's in Paris.) It's what's happening around here in this season. The garden plot is ready, but the conventional wisdom says we shouldn't set out delicate plants before May 15, when the frost danger is over in this climate. Accuweather says tomorrow morning's low temperature at Saint-Aignan will be just +3ºC — well below 40ºF. That's chilly for May 1. It's not so cold this morning because it's cloudy and raining.

By the way, can you tell I'm enjoying putting my photos in round or oval frames?

Finally, here's a view of our house and the big red maple trees that grow just east of our front terrace. We've been living here, at the end of the paved road, for nearly 15 years now.  I retired (quit my job) in California at the age of 53, fed up with the traffic jams, earthquakes, long commutes, long hours, and office politics after nearly 20 years of working in the San Francisco Bay Area (SF itself, on the Peninsula, and in Silicon Valley at various times). I had always thought I might come back to France late in life, after living and working over here, mostly in Paris, between 1970 and 1982. I did it! I plan to finish out my days on Earth here — in France, if not in this house.