Hail!

Tasha and I had just headed out the back door yesterday afternoon when the hail started falling. We were almost at the back gate and we had to come running back toward the house.

The Citroën was sitting out on the driveway, unprotected. That was my first thought — grab the key and move the car to the carport, which would prevent hail damage. You never know how long the ice will continue falling, or how big the hailstones will get.

In this case, they didn't get any bigger than pea- or marble-size. The greenhouse glass came through the squall just fine. And the hail shower lasted only five minutes or so.

Tasha and I were able to go out for our walk, but it was a short one. There was a lot of thunder, and there were a few raindrops, but we didn't get hit by any more hail.

I was lucky in the morning. I went to the market, bought bread, strawberries, asperges violettes, and two très secs goat cheeses. The cheeses came from a farm over in the village called Fontguenand, which is about equidistant from Selles-sur-Cher to the north and Valençay to the south.

We grated one of the hard goat cheeses the way you'd grate Parmesan cheese and ate it with gnocchi and tomato-and-veal sauce at lunchtime.