Here we are waiting to see if the landscaping crew will show up this morning. It's not raining and I don't think the ground is too wet for the work to be done. If nothing else, the crew can start trimming the long hedge that runs around three sides of our property. It's over 110 meters (about 400 feet) of hedge, if I'm not mistaken.
Diogenese asked in a comment yesterday why we have had so many trees and shrubs die on our property over the last few years. I attribute a lot of it to the very dry, hot summers and wet, mild winters we've had over the past 4 or 5 years. The landscaper agrees with me, at least about the hot dry summers. Our neighbors have lost a lot of trees too. I also attribute the die-off to the sheer age of the trees planted around our hamlet.
An aerial photo of the hamlet taken sometime between 1950 and 1965
This hamlet (officially) or village (in local parlance) underwent a transformation in the 1960s and 1970s, I believe. Our house was built in the late 1960s. There are two other houses in the hamlet that were built, I believe, at about the same time. Then there are six houses that have been here a lot longer, maybe since the first half of the 1800s. Three of those old houses were bought by our neighbors in about 1970. That might be when electricity and running water became available here. One other house, I recently learned, has been occupied by the same family since 1950. Another old house stood empty for several decades. A young couple bought it a couple of years ago and just had a new roof put on it.
A recent map showing the nine houses and the outbuildings that make up the hamlet
So of the nine houses in the hamlet, seven either were built or changed hands about 50 years ago. One other one was bought and restored about 40 years ago. I'm sure a lot of the new residents planted new trees on their property when they moved in. Those are the trees that are dying, I think.
A recent aerial photo of the hamlet where we live
In this post I'm including a recent map of the hamlet as well as two aerial photos. I've numbered the houses on two of the images — our house is number 9. In the older aerial photo, taken sometime between 1950 and 1965, you can six the six old houses that still stand. There were a lot of outbuildings (barns and sheds) all around, and many of those no longer exist. The hamlet was surrounded by farmland that has now been replaced by vineyards. I'm not sure when that happened, but the owner of many of the vineyard parcels around here, who is in his mid-80s now, told me one day that he remembers working in the fields in his youth and how muddy everything was back then.
This is interesting. In the first photo your property and the donkey’s are of different color. Do you know if your property was planted in vines? Since there are no big trees showing. There seem to have been some vegetation, no longer extant, next to the pond and across the lane in your property. Changes happen over the years.
ReplyDeleteBlogger has eaten two previous comments I tried to leave. The donkey pen is in the upper left-hand corner of the image. Our property used to be divided into two parcels, according to the cadastre. Those two were combined into one larger parcel sometime in the 1970s, I think.
ReplyDeleteI’d gladly pay a small recurrent monthly fee ($1.00) to Google for them to take a better care of Blogger! They could make a lot of money from the millions of people who use Blogger daily.
DeleteYou send Google/Blogger a million dollars, and I'll send a million. Maybe things will get better (if the money doesn't just go into the pockets of the executives...)
DeleteI hope there is good news... did the landscapers come, after all?
ReplyDeleteNo, nobody showed up and no news from anybody. Very discouraging.
DeleteJust got a message from the landscaper. He said he thought he had sent us an e-mail but realized he had neglected to hit the send button after writing it. Ha! He promised to be here with his crew next Monday Oct. 11.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting post.
ReplyDeleteThe landscaper: words fail me. Or at least the type of words suitable here.
I remember when posts would disappear back in the early days of the internet. This sort of reminds me of that. I hope he keeps his word next week, why doesn't he come tomorrow?
ReplyDeletePredictions are that we'll have a big rainstorm tomorrow!
DeleteInteresting post - so where you are now was planted fields before. The quantity of agriculture has gone down for sure. Sorry your landscaper didn't show. Plan B for a different crew? I don't know if forgetting to press the send button passes the smell test.
ReplyDeleteThe 400 feet of hedge is clearly visible in the last photo.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't realized there were that many houses there, always thought it was just yours and a couple of others. It's positively bright lights, big city.
At night it's not exactly the Blackpool illuminations! Or the Vegas strip.
DeleteAhh, but you can see the night sky and the stars. Something I sorely miss.
DeleteWhen we got here and moved in 18 years ago, the night skies were amazing. The stars were so bright. We watched satellites and the international space station move across the sky. It was the year of the Grande Canicule and the air was dry and crisp — Saharan. The silence at night was almost audible. Now we have an autoroute nearby, with lots of streetlights. The sky is less brilliant, and we can hear the roar of trucks and cars the way we were used to hearing that constant roar in San Francisco.
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