Two photos of the Château de Saint-Aignan

Above, a view of the church and the château at Saint-Aignan in the Loir-et-Cher. I took the photo in July 2004, about a year after we came to live here. Our house is less that two miles from the château.

Below, a slightly closer view of just the château. It stands on the left bank of the Cher river about 35 miles west of the city of Tours. It was built between the 10th and 16th centuries (another July 2004 photo).

 

Another chilly morning

The daisies and the artichokes obviously haven't been unhappy with our recent torrid weather. Here's what they look like out in the back yard. This morning, like yesterday morning, the outdoor air feels chilly. This is ideal weather for the season.

The chill is back

Yesterday we cooled down a little, but by afternoon humidity started building. It was muggy, but the humidity didn't last too long. This morning, the air coming into the house — windows wide open right now — feels downright chilly. Above is a photo I just took from a west-facing window.

Below is a photo I took from the same window on July 3, 2018 — seven years ago. The skies that day were more dramatic than this morning's. The weather guy on TéléMatin just said that we'll be going into a rainy spell starting on Monday, with much milder high temperatures (low 70s F).

Salvation

Salvation on two fronts: first, the weather is changing. A weak cold front is moving across Brittany, Normandy, the Channel, the Loire Valley, and the Paris region today. It's a beginning. Temperatures won't be quite as high. By 6:00 p.m., the temperature will be just 30ºC. Yesterday, it was more like 36ºC at that hour. We'll be able to breathe again. Maybe we won't have another extreme heat wave this summer.

Can you even tell that there's a fence on our north side of our yard? It's a fence that we had put in 20 years ago. Nobody seems to know who owns the land that is on the other side of it. Not even the mairie or the maire. We wouldn't want to buy it because we'd have to pay somebody to clear the land and make it usable.

The north side fence is 50 meters long; that's more than 150 feet. The woods on the other side of it are full of blackberry brambles and other noxious, invasive weeds.

You can see one of our apple trees in the photos above. The two are about the same size. They need pruning.

The other salvation arrived yesterday morning. It has to do with yard work. Walt sent the guy who runs the landscaping business an e-mail early yesterday and asked him if he could come over and do a walk-around out in the yard to see all the big and little jobs that need to be done. We expected him to say that he'd get over here one day soon. He lives just five miles up the road from us, and he said "I can come over this morning." That was unhoped for. After seeing everything we need done: pruning our two apple trees and the big linden tree out back; cutting back plants that are invading the north side of our property and threatening to pull the fence down on that side of the yard. And also digging up the bed of millepertuis (St. John's Wort) on the south He's going to send us what is called un devis (a bid or contract) for the job. He said almost all of it is work he'll do this winter after his crew has done the annual hedge-trimming job in the Fall. So now we can breathe a sigh of relief. The work will get done. He and his crew have always done a good job for us over the past dozen or more years, but sometimes they are hard to pin down. They know we always pay our bills and have no complaints about the work they do.

Maybe I'll finally get the greenhouse cleaned out. Now that we'll be having more comfortable temperatures and also a plan of action for all the other tasks that need to be taken care of. I just noticed that we are no longer in the MétéoFrance vigilance red zone. Hurray! (See Walt's blog today for more about this subject.)

In the red...

...for heat. Here is today's vigilance map posted by MétéoFrance, the French national weather service. Actually, the map looks exactly the same for tomorrow too. We are in the red danger zone and are being asked to curtail our outdoor activities and drink a lot of water over the course of the day. I've added labels for Paris and for Saint-Aignan on the map; Paris is about 150 miles north of Saint-Aignan.

Below is a map showing today's and tomorrow's high temperatures all around the country.
We're in the 38 to 40C zone (purple). Paris is not quite as hot.

Arriving from the east

From upriver, that means. The the first town upriver from Saint-Aignan is Selles-sur-Cher (famous for goat cheese).
The next town downriver is Montrichard. The river is the Cher.There's a town every 10 miles along the Cher, and there are a lot of villages all along the way.

Here's a closer view of Saint-Aignan (pop. 3,000 or so). We're having a heat wave, with a high temperature today of 38ºC. Tomorrow a degree hotter, and Wednesday another degree hotter. Thirty-eight Celsius is 100ºF.

A close call

The storm or storms that passed through the Loire Valley three nights ago caused a lot of damage in the Blois area, including the grounds of the Château de Chambord and villages in that area. The worst of the storm tracked southward from the right bank of the Loire through Chambord toward Saint-Aignan. One village just five miles east of us was especially hard hit. We have friends over there, including an American couple who moved here 15 years ago and the man who owns and operates the landscaping business we've hired for the past 12 years or so to cut down dead trees in our yard and to trim our long, tall, wide laurel hedge every year in autumn.

Our American friends told us yesterday that they lost quite a few big trees to the high winds the storm brought. They've been busy filing insurance claims. The mayor of Couffy has declared the storm a major natural disaster for the village. Our friends have talked to some of their neighbors who have lived there for decades and nobody has ever seen anything like this kind of wind damage in Couffy before. Walt and I were very lucky this past week that the storm didn't cut through the Saint-Aignan area. The fact is, trees were blown down over at the Beauval zoo (a mile or two from here), which had to close for a day to clean up the debris.

I'm not posting anything else today. I don't know if you'll be able to view the video I'm linking to here. Let me know.

Is this a bonsai?

Does this jade plant qualify as a bonsai? I planted a small branch in this pot close to 20 years ago, I think, and it grew into this.

Meanwhile, weather reports tell us to expect temperatures in the low 90s F today, the mid-90s tomorrow, the upper 90s on Monday, and 105ºF or higher on Tuesday and Wednesday. When we had similar temperatures in July 2019, I called the phenomenon a heat storm. The same temperatures are predicted for Paris as for the Loire Valley.

Summertime storms

We have had stormy weather this week. Tuesday afternoon, a big thunderstorm blew through, passing directly over us and bringing hard rain that continued off and on overnight, but the storms were much worse north of Blois and over toward Paris. Near Blois, power wires were downed, and thousands are still without power. In Paris a lot of street trees were uprooted. Tree trunks were broken in two. There were branches everywhere, news reports said. Several metro stations were flooded and there was a foot or more of water on many streets in the city.

Here in Saint-Aignan, things were a little calmer. I took the picture on the left when I went out for the morning walk in the vineyard with Tasha on Wednesday. We were walking and looking toward the west.

When I turned around and started walking back toward the house, this is what the eastern skies looked like. South of Saint-Aignan, in many areas there were hailstorms that caused major damage.

We were lucky here. The worst "damage" we had was a four- or five-hour internet outage yesterday morning.

I assume it was storm-related.

Tall plants

Over the winter, an umbrella tree (schefflera) that I was keeping in a pot grew really tall and leggy. A few weeks ago, I decided to cut the top out of it and root it in water. I still had about a meter (about three feet) of stem left in the pot, with its roots and with just one leaf at the top. Rather than put the stem and leaf in the compost, I just set it aside in a place where it would get a lot of light to see what would happen to it. Well, one day recently I notice that leaft buds were growing all along its length. The photo on the left show what it looks like now. Meanwhile, I put the top in water and in just a few days it started growing root. I planted that cutting in a pot too. It's only half as tall as the one in my photo. I can't wait to see what it will look like toward the end of the summer.

Here's another tall plant that I keep in a pot. It's called elephant bush by some. The scientific name is Portulacaria afra and it's two or three inches taller than the Schefflera. I've read that the Portulacaria can be made into a Bonsai. I plan to do just that.

Un « cake » aux bananes et aux noix de pécan

Yesterday I made what we in the U.S. call banana bread. It's a "quick bread" and is made with baking soda (bicarbonate alimentaire) and/or baking powder (levure chimique) rather than with yeast (levure de boulanger). I had several bananas that had been ripening on the kitchen counter for a few days. The weather turned very hot, and the bananas were completely ripe before I even noticed. The riper the banana, the sweeter it is, even if the yellow banana peel has started turning black. You peel the banana and mash the banana flesh. Then you mix it into a cake batter and bake it. Here's how my banana cake looked:

You can bake the banana bread batter in a round or square cake pan, a loaf pan (called a un moule à cake in French), or in a mold like the one you see above, which is called un  moule à financiers. Financiers are little loaf cakes made with almond powder. Oh, after filling the financier mold, I had some batter left over. I baked it in a round ceramic ramekin. That's how my finished banana bread turned into a flower for serving or for snacking.

Weather etc.

Weather bulletin: we've been having significantly cooler weather this week compared to last. However, all next week we're supposed to see highs in the upper 90s F again. The good news is that that kind of heat is only supposed to last until about July 4 and then for the rest of July and the first week of August we'll have highs in the 70s and low 80s.That's what Accuweather's long-range forecast says. I hope it's right.

 
Yesterday morning the neighbors' goats came out to greet me when I walked by the fence that keeps them from wandering around the hamlet. The goats seem to be less and less afraid of Tasha. Meanwhile, the bird in the photo above was keeping an eye on me and my camera.

 
Daisies come up in our back yard every year at this time. They're not invasive but are perennial.

Vues inhabituelles de Saint-Aignan

These are two views of Saint-Aignan that we hardly ever see. I took both photos in late June of 2010, one two or three hours later than the other. Back then, we knew some people who lived on the eastern side of town, and we were having dinner with them in their front yard. Both of them have now passed away.

 

Moving air and an elusive cat

Soon after I got up this morning (at 5 a.m.) and opened all the windows to let some cool morning air into the house, the air started moving for the first time in about a week. Yesterday everything was perfectly still and the temperature reached 35.5 degrees Celsius — that's about 95 F, and was lower than predicted. It wasn't unpleasant, actually. This morning the sky is gray and there's a cool breeze blowing.

The yellow flowers above are the non-invasive wild millepertuis variety that grows out in the vineyard.
These are photos I took in June 2015.

At six a.m. I went out on the terrace to see if it was raining or just gray. I looked out toward the back yard and saw a cat lying on the ground near our oregano patch. I think it was the neighbors' cat named Ulia that went missing on May 12. If it was, that's the third time I've seen her over the past month. I sent a text message to the people Ulia belonged to. I'm waiting to see if they answer me again. I wonder if Ulia might be living near the pond out back, where she can get water to drink and maybe small rodents to hunt and eat. Or maybe it was a different cat. Maybe Ulia returned home one way or another. I hope so.

Happy Solstice

Accuweather predicts that our high temperature today, around 6:00 pm, will be 38ºC (that's 100.4ºF).
The weather guy on our Télématin morning show is predicting the same.

Here's a photo of the blackberry bramble that is taking over the pond out behind our back gate.
The village owns it, but nobody seems to be trying to keep it under control.

 
Meanwhile, our hydrangeas (hortensia) have enjoyed all the rain we've had for two years now.
They have doubled in height and are threatening to take over the front of our house.

 
Another invasive plant, though not as aggressive, is what we call "hens and chicks" (sempervivum or joubarbe). They are easier to contain than the millepertuis is. I've also been collecting rocks. For years. I found pots and pots of them in the greenhouse. As part of the "let's empty the greenhouse" project I hauled all the pots of rocks outdoors and then decided that rather than paint the window sill on the back side of the house, I'd just store rocks up there this summer. I think I'm fascinated by rocks because where I grew up on the North Carolina coast, we didn't have any rocks. The land was all sand.

Progrès ?

                                    Yesterday                                                             Today

I think you'll have to use your imagination because my photos don't reflect reality. We (Walt, really) made great progress on getting rid of the millepertuis yesterday. If you look closely at the top of the Today photo, you can see that the plants' stems there are taller than the ones toward the bottom and middle of the photo. Walt got out our electric hedge clipper and went at it. It's the clipper he used to use to trim our bay laurel hedge every autumn until 2012, when we engaged a lanscaping contractor to do that annual chore. Yesterday, we raked up millepertuis trimmings that filled a wheelbarrow to overflowing. More later.

Fruits and flowers

The pond outside our back gate — the pond is owned by the village — is quickly being taken over by blackberries (ronces in French). If the weather stays as hot as it is right now, maybe we'll soon be able to harvest some berries.

One of our neighbors has a plum tree that is loaded down with fruit. If they start falling to the ground, I'll go get some. They are the size of cherries and make a very good clafoutis.

Above left, a view of our red maple trees from the neigbors' yard. Above right, one of the roses in our yard. A lot of flowers are fading now because of the hot, dry days we're having.

Working on the millepertuis

This is one of the big projects (for me) that I'm working on right now. My goal is to get rid of the millepertuis (St. John's wort) that is spreading along the south-facing wall of our house. Walt is spraying it every few days with what we are calling "the recipe" — a mixture of highly acidic vinegar (vinaigre ménager), salt, and dishwashing liquid. The spraying seems to be working, as you can see in the photo on the right below. The photo on the left below shows what the millepertuis looked like in June 2015. Here's a link to some posts I've published about millepertuis over the years.

I went out a few days ago and bought a new hedge clipper, because the old one we had was too rusty and dull to cut the millepertuis plants' woody stems. The new clipper cuts better than the old one, but it's still not easy to use. Walt tried to dig up some of the plants using a shovel, but the ground that it's growing in is as hard as concrete. Then I decided that maybe I can let heat kill the plants by covering them with a black plastic tarp and letting the sun do the job. We are expecting a heat wave over the next few days, and that might help. The tarp is three meters wide and 15 meters long. I have a lot of big rocks, bricks, and cinderblocks we can use to hold it down and keep it from blowing away if the weather turns windy.

Grapes

The grape flowers we've been seeing out in the vineyard are now rapidly becoming actual grapes.

The weather this week is supposed to get hotter and hotter every day. Even today the high temperature is supposed to be around 85.

By Sunday we're predicted to experience caniculaire (dog-day) conditions. That means extreme, dangerous heat.

Since we still don't have any kind of air-conditioning, I'm not looking forward to the heat wave. We lived through the great canicule of 2003 when we arrived here 22 years ago. It was not fun.