Land and water

Winter is still with us. We've had 10 days of cold mornings (around freezing, often just below), but they've been balanced out by relatively warm afternoons (temperatures between 50 and 60 in ºF). Starting today we're going into a week of wet but mild weather. This morning's low temperature is about the same as yesterday's high. Here are some Saint-Aignan winter scenes — one sunset and two sunrises — in photos from late January to mid-February. The first two are views looking west, and the third is looking east into the sunrise.

The Renaudière vineyard, where we live, covers about 120 acres (50 hectares) of land in the shape of a fairly narrow strip that runs from our hamlet out toward the southwest for two kilometers. The gravel road that starts just behind our back gate is 1.2 kilometers long (about three-quarters of a mile) before it intersects with a couple of paved roads carrying just light car traffic. That 1½ mile walk out and back is about the most we do, and my daily walks, especially in bad weather, are shorter than that, given my age. We can walk that far without coming close to any houses and without seeing any utility poles or wires, and almost no cars — much less any shops or other businesses.

Isn't it strange how I stopped posting about food and cooking when the pandemic started about a year ago? I don't know why that happened. I just scrolled through the blog posts I did in March and April 2020, and I see a few food posts. Then they sort of petered out, with just a few here and there. I started traveling in my mind through old photos of different parts of France we've seen over the past 20 years, since I started taking a lot of pictures. I needed broader horizons, I guess, than the confines of the kitchen. That doesn't mean I stopped cooking, however. We have to eat, and I love good food and crave a varied diet. Yesterday I made a Thai curry of chicken and broccoli for our lunch. The day before I made a meat sauce for pasta with beef, tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, peppers, parsley, and other herbs and vegetables. Today Walt will put some of that on pizzas for our lunch. With what's left, I'll make lasagna over the weekend.

Also, last summer's garden was not nearly as productive as in years past. We had only negligible rainfall last year from June through September, just as we did in 2019. We live on high land far above the Cher River, which is about a kilometer from our house. I just checked the elevations on Google Earth maps, and I see that our house is 384 feet (117 meters) above sea level. The elevation down on the banks of the river is 214 feet (65 meters). So we are about 170 feet (50 meters) above the level of the river. That means that when we go three or four months without measurable precipitation, the level of the water table under us drops drastically. That's my assumption. There's no higher ground nearby, and certainly no mountains to send us run-off. The neighbors across the street have a well on their property. They told me last September that they had to drop a bucket 38 meters (125 feet) down the well before it hit water. We're not used to having to do a lot of watering out in the garden, so things got very dry. In fact, at least five trees on our half-acre of land have died over the past two years, not to mention half a dozen hazelnut bushes. The landscaping crew that came and cut the dead trees down told me that two consecutive hot, dry summers have really taken their toll on local trees and bushes.