Meanwhile, in Saint-Aignan...

We've had a couple of inches of rain over the 10 days since we came back home from the Vendée, and it's done the local landscape a lot of good. We've also had some nice sunny days, including yesterday and the day before. The weather seems to be returning to normal. The fall colors are beautiful right now.

The laurel hedge and the bay laurel bush have been trimmed one more time. The grass has started to green up again. Mornings can be chilly — we had a heavy frost a few days ago — but one morning the temperature is in the 30s in ºF and the next it's up closer to 50, like right now. Today's high temperature is supposed to be in the mid-teens in ºC (low to mid-60s in ºF) — pas mal pour le mois de novembre.

There's nothing like getting away from it all for a few days to make you appreciate where you live when you return home. The Vendée and the Atlantic coast definitely have a lot going for them, and I have more photos to post that prove that. Stay turned. It's amazing how we left here on October 20 when it still seemed like summer, spent a week near the coast where it really felt like July because people were strolling and even sun-bathing on the beaches. Then we returned to enjoy weather that really feels autumnal. It was a clean break. We lucked out with our timing.

At the same time, our area, the eastern edge of the Touraine province, the southern edge of the Loir-et-Cher, have are definitely beautiful too. In this season, morning and afternoon walks are not good times for taking photos, because it's just too dark. The days are short, with sunrise at 7:45 a.m. and sunset at 5:30 p.m. These days I'm trying to spend time driving around the area, as I've said before, like a teenager in the 18-year-old Peugeot to blow the carbon out of the pistons and get it ready for inspection. This is something I have to do, and enjoy doing, every second year in November. The countryside and fall colors make it a pleasant task.