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.

Same day, more reds...

The day I stopped on the side of the road to take the photos of fields of poppies that I posted yesterday, I was headed toward the little town of Valençay, about 10 miles east of Saint-Aignan. I was going to do some shopping in the weekly market there. Above you see The market hall, where some of the vendors display and sell their products. Other vendors have stalls outdoors on the market square or along the nearby streets. The tomatoes at the market that day in June 2010 were beautiful, as you can see.

The halle au blé (market hall) in Valençay was built about 100 years ago. The weekly market sets up on Tuesday mornings. Valençay is famous for its goat cheeses and wines (reds, whites rosés). The restaurant above right is one Walt and I first went to for a nice lunch in October 2000. We've returned several times over the years.

Poppies

Red poppies are called coquelicots in French. I saw these fields of poppies when I was on my way to Valençay,
near the town of Lye (lee), to go shopping in the weekly open-air market there.

These are photos that I took 15 years ago today, on June 15, 2010, using
a Panasonic DMC-ZS1 digital camera that I still have and still use once in a while.

Chinese money plant

Here's photo to show Evelyn how the plant she brought me from the U.S. four years ago is doing these days.
Those are Tasha's front paws in the background.

The moon this morning

The view from our guest bedroom window at 5:30 this morning. Photo taken with my Samsung smartphone's camera.

I've never been able to find out why there is a big B on this house's chimney. I don't know when the house was built, or by whom. The people who live there now moved in just 2 or 3 years ago.

A river walk

After mentioning walks along the Cher river near our house in yesterday's post, I decided on the spur of the moment to go down there for the morning walk with Tasha. I forgot how low in the sky and bright the sun shines early in the morning, making it difficult to take photos. Here are a couple, however. By the way, Tasha is at the vet's this morning having her teeth cleaned. Walt just got back from dropping her off. He or I will go pick her up this afternoon. She had to fast starting at 8:00 p.m. yesterday. She was very disoriented and subdued this morning when she didn't get her normal breakfast at the normal time.

These two pictures are of the lock keeper's house on the right bank of the Cher from different perspectives.

Local scenes and colors

Down the hill and through the woods into the river valley from our hamlet... We can take nice walks along the Cher river and around the port at the western end of the Canal de Berry, the region's two main water features.

These are photos I took within two or three miles of our house. I took them on June 11, 2005 — 20 years ago today. We're having the same kind of weather today. The area around Saint-Aignan is basically agricultural (grape-growing is agriculture too).

We live on high ground about half a mile from the river and two miles from the canal. There are often big fields of red poppies all around us at this time of year.

Our first heat wave

I mean our first heat wave of the year. Already. The temperature is supposed to hit 85F this afternoon, and 90F tomorrow afternoon. We'll be spending time on our terrace (photos below) which is just off the living room and the kitchen.

We spent Sunday afternoon out there, in fact. The temperature wasn't torrid, but it was pleasant. And the company was great. We had a glass or two of wine and some home-made hummus and eggplant caviar with British friends that we hadn't seen since the beginning of the Covid pandemic five or six years ago. They brought along another American friend of theirs who has lived in Texas, New York, and California. Now she has lived in France for three or four years, if I understood correctly. It's not often that we have friends in these days, and it was a lot of fun.

The plant with yellow flowers in the photo above is a memory of my mother, who passed away in 2018. In 1997, she and I went on a road trip from North Carolina to Illinois and back. That's where I spent five or six years in graduate school back in the 1980s, and my mother had never seen the place. We stayed with old friends of mine who live outside Urbana. Somewhere along the way, my mother acquired a cutting of the sedum plant above. Back in N.C., she planted it in her back yard. When she sold her house in 2005, I went over there to help her move out. I returned to Saint-Aignan with a cutting from the sedum and I've had it growing here ever since.

More Lavardin wall art

For centuries these paintings were themselves painted over and hidden from view. They were only rediscovered and uncovered about a hundred years ago, when a layer of plain gray paint was stripped off. Some have been restored.

Lavardin is also the site of a ruined medieval château-fort.

More church art for a Sunday

Just some photos today. Friends who live about an hour's drive from here are coming to visit this afternoon. They're British and they're bringing along an American friend of theirs. I'll be curious to know if the American woman lives in France or is just visiting. And it will be good to see our British friends, whom we haven't seen in a year or more, and maybe since the beginning of the Covid pandemic five years ago.

The church at Lavardin

Lavardin is a village about 90 minutes north of Saint-Aignan, on the river called le Loir near the town of Montoire. Charles-Henry and I drove up there in June 2015 to visit a cousin of his who had bought a small château in that area. As usual, we stopped in churches, including the one in Lavardin (pop. 178), which is known for its elaborate wall paintings. The church was built toward the end of the 11th century. The site of the town has been occupied by humans since prehistoric times.

Sources say the wall paintings at Lavardin were done between the 12th and 14th centuries. I used to tease Charles-Henry about his love of churches because he was almost radically disdainful of organized religion. I miss the many car trips we took together between 2004 and 2015. This one might have been our last one together — it's hard to remember. He died in 2024 the age of 99.

Around the vineyard

Above left is the tractor path that runs along our back hedges and gate. On the left also is the plum tree (dark red leaves) that I planted there years ago. On the right is a photo of grape flowers growing out in the vineyard.

Our house is barely visible behind the trees in our back yard. You can see the garden shed, which is slightly taller than the hedge. I heard rain overnight, and it's raining right now. Predictions are for better weather (sunny, warm) starting Sunday, after rain showers today and tomorrow. We're getting a break from doing yard work.

The vineyard is surrounded by woods. Trees fall, and spiders thrive.

Yesterday for lunch I made a savory cake containing cubes of cooked chicken, smoked pork larbons, sun-dried tomatoes, cheese, and herbs and spices. It's a cake or bread that is salty, not sweet.

Here's a link to the recipe. It's one I came up with myself a few years ago.