Looking closely

We had a technician here yesterday afternoon to tinker with our boiler. It was working enough for us to get some heat since we had fuel delivered Thursday morning, but periodically it would just shut down for no apparent reason. It seems to be working fine now, but we don't know exactly what the techician did to repair it. It doesn't matter, since we have a service contract with the company that installed the thing, for emergencies like these. When the boiler needs repair, we don't have to pay labor charges. We do have to pay for any parts that need replacing. Of course, now the weather has really warmed up and we don't really need heat. We probably won't need heat again until October. Still, on ne sait jamais. There can be cold mornings in late spring and in summertime in this climate, even in July and August.

These are some close-up shots of things that caught my eye at the Château de Carrouges
on some of my visits there.

I was just reading the pamphlet that the staff at Carrouges gives to visitors. It points out that the decision
to build the château out of bricks was made because there was a lot of clay
in the local soil but not much stone for building.

The Ancient Romans used bricks as a building material. Bricks also became popular toward
the end of the middle ages and the begining of the Renaissance in France.

One wing of the Château de Blois was built using brick. The Château du Moulin over near Romorantin,
20 miles east of Saint-Aignan, was built with brick in the late 1400s.

I suppose it was more cost-effective to make bricks and build with them that it would have been
to move loads of stone over long distances — without trucks or railroads.

Lichens like stone. They grow all around us on stone walls, and on tree trunks and limbs too.
They don't seem to grow well on bricks. At least not at Carrouges.