Easter activities

Our part-time neighbors, who officially live in Blois, are here for the weekend. They include the matriarch of the clan (M.), who will celebrate her 90th birthday this year. The patriarch, her husband (B.), died last year at the age of 94. Both M. and B. had seven siblings themselves, so they had always lived in big families. In turn, they had five children of their own, and they also adopted two children. They bought their country house here in Saint-Aignan back in 1970 (which is when I came to France for the first time, at the age of 20). When they bought it, the house had dirt floors and only half of the roof was tiled. It was basically a ruin.

Walt and I met M. and B. in 2003 we came to live here. They welcomed us with open arms, and adopted us in a way. They have included us in many of their huge family events over the years. They never seemed to mind that we were a same-sex couple. That said, one of their grandsons came out of the closet a few years ago. M. told me at the time that she would never have thought such a thing as same-sex marriage could exist if she hadn't met and befriended Walt and me 22 years ago.

M. and B.'s oldest child is now in her mid-60s. She and her husband have been given the responibility of maintaining the family's country house here in Saint-Aignan, across the street from our house. There has been some tension between her and her sisters, she's told me. Why was she chosen? Or burdened... there's an awful lot of work involved in maintaining a plot of land as big as theirs. The old house periodically needs repairs and improvements, and it's a 50-mile drive round trip from Blois to Saint-Aignan. The family seems to be making the best of it and they all of them still get along, as far as I know.

Sunset seen from our house in Saint-Aignan a few days ago

I can only wonder what will happen to M. and B.'s house in Blois and the house here in Saint-Aignan when M. passes on. Their children will have to work all that out when the time comes. If I understand correctly, in France parents can't disinherit their children, each of whom is entitled to an equal portion of the estate. Large families like M. and B.'s have to make arrangements among themselves as to who gets what when their parents leave this world. Do they buy each other out? Or do they just sell the property and divide up the proceeds?

It's all so different from what my family went through when my grandparents died. My mother and her sister were the only children of their parents, neither of whom I knew. My maternal grandfather died in 1939. I was born in 1949. My maternal grandmother died when I was still an infant. In 1939, an uncle and aunt of theirs, who had four children of their own, took my mother and her sister in. Their mother's health was bad. My mother was nine years old, and my aunt was only three years old. When the uncle who took them in died, I was 12 years old so I knew him. He left my mother and her sister the houses they lived in then and that each of them had been renting from him for several years.

As for my father's side of the family, my paternal grandfather died in 1969 and and my paternal grandmother died in 1977. I have no idea how their property was divided up, or if it was. My parents divorced in 1970, and my mother kept her house. After asking my sister and me if either one of one of us thought we might want to live there one day and we both said no, she decided to sell the place. That was in 2005. She was lonely there, as her neighbors gradually died off and new, younger people bought their houses. Anyway, she was sick and tired of maintaining the place. She sold it that year. She put the money she was paid for it in the bank and saved it until she died in 2018 at age 88, because she wanted my sister and me to have it for our old age.

Collard greens in a quiche

You could make this quiche with collard greens or kale, or other members of the cabbage family. I happened to have some collards that came from Portugal (or maybe northwest Spain) and were shredded raw and then frozen. They still needed to be cooked. In Portugal or Spain they would probably be cooked in a soup. Here, I cooked them and then let them cool down to room temperature and mixed them into a quiche batter. The other ingredient in the quiche is bacon. I used French bacon — I'm italicizing the word because it's French bacon, not American. It's more like Canadian bacon: very lean.

This bacon was cut into small pieces called "matchsticks" (alumettes) and sold as lardons. I cooked the frozen collards and bacon together in a frying pan on the stove with a little bit of water to prepare them for the quiche. Collards, unlike spinach (also good greens for a quiche of course), need long, slow cooking. Taste them after they've cooked for an hour or more and make sure they are tender. Bacon or other lardons give them good flavor.

Mix the collards and bacon into the quiche batter, which is made with three eggs some grated cheese, and about three-quarters of a cup of either cream, half-and-half, or milk. Then pour the mixture into a blind-baked pie crust (pâte brisée) and top it with some more grated cheese. I used Cantal, the French cheese that most resembles Cheddar, but so-called "Swiss" cheese like Comté or Guyère or even Morbier woult also be good.

Bake the quiche in a hot oven (180ºC, 350ºF) for 30 to 45 minutes. When it's browned and the custard (batter) has set, it's ready. Serve slices of the quiche hot, warm, or even cold. Enjoy.

Good news and bad news

The good news is that my laptop seems to be working fine this morning. I don't understand what happened yesterday. As my late friend Charles-Henry used to say: Ce sont les mystères et les joies de l'électronique. The bad news is that it's raining again. Here are some photos of the neighborhood.

Above left, the vineyard out behind our back gate, with our yard and house in the distance. Above right, the yard north of our house; the reddish-brown tree in the background is a plum tree in our neighbor's yard.

The linden tree (un tilleul) and an apple tree (un pommier) in our back yard. Both are growing leaves now. Blossoms will come later.

The little white flowers are called pâquerettes (Easter daisies) in French — "lawn daisies" in English. They're wild and they grow all around us this time of year. The photo on the left is apparently a bay laurel (as in "bay leaves" or laurier sauce) sporting its springtime flower stalks and clusters.

The neighbors' goats

These are our neighbors' goats. These are chèvres, not boucs (in other words nanny goats, not billy goats). They are not so aggressive. Why are they looking away rather than looking at me and the camera? Because they are keeping an eye on 'Tasha the Shetland sheep dog...

I'm having computer problems this morning. I hope I'll be able to fix them and able to blog tomorrow.

Saturday morning

Yesterday started out as a very pretty day. I'm glad I took my phone out on my walk with 'Tasha early in the morning, because by about 11 o'clock it had started raining. It was a fine, steady rain that lasted for about 10 hours, I think.

On Friday, Walt got the riding mower going again. He wrote about it on his blog yesterday. By Friday afternoon, he had mowed the whole yard. That was a good thing, since rain is predicted off and on all week. The grass might have been knee high by next Saturday if it hadn't had that last-minute mowing.

When we go out our back gate and turn right, this is what we see. The trees downhill from our yard are impressive. One strip of land out there is planted in fruit trees, including plums, quince, and apples. The people who have owned that strip for about five years now live in Brittany, and they haven't come to Saint-Aignan for about two years now. They told us years ago to take what fruit we want from their little orchard. The yellow plums from their trees are delicious. Just ask Evelyn...

Here's a picture that shows what my plum tree looks like right now. It's much bigger than it was 11 years ago, which is when I took the picture of it that I posted yesterday. 'Tasha was nice to strike a pretty pose for yesterday's photo.

Another Prunus among us

Voyez-vous les prunes?

I planted this Prunus tree at least a dozen years ago. If you look carefully at the first and third photos in this post, you can see tiny plums that look like cherries.

I fully expect that the most of the plums you see on this prunier will be devoured by birds rather than by people, as happens most years.

Focus on the prunus

The prunus tree in our back yard is in full bloom right now. Prunus is a genus of flowering trees that includes 340 species,according to the Wikipedia article about them. Just to name a few: plums, cherries, peaches, nectarines, apricots, and almonds. The one we have in the back yard is an ornamental plant that doesn't produce any fruit.

The last picture in this post shows the trunk of a fir tree whose trunk was covered in ivy until a few days ago. We had a very wet winter that encouraged its growth. I stripped all the ivy off this past week, hoping that the ivy that grows up into the tree branches will now die back. I don't climb on ladders much any more.

I took these photos with my Samsung smart phone's camera.

What things look like these days

Above right: If anybody has a suggestion about how I get the ivy off the exterior walls of our garden shed, I'd love to hear it. The walls are coated in a rough render that can really tear up your hands. We're having new shutters put on the shed window soon. Above left, a springtime sunrise.

Above right, a better picture of the Mahonia plant than the one I posted a few days ago. This one is in our hedge, not the neighors'. Above left, you can see how high the grass is growing. The riding mower's battery has failed. We are expecting a new one to arrive today or tomorrow.

Above: potted succulents. Donkey tails and hens and chicks.

Lentils for lunch

We've had lentils for lunch twice this week. Do you like them? I don't think Americans eat lentils as much as French people do. I read somewhere that the country that consumes the most lentils is India, and that the country that grows the most lentils is Canada. France grows a lot of lentils (called lentilles) too. We enjoyed them one day with Toulouse sausages (pork) and another day with Merguez sausages (beef and lamb).

As our second course one day, we had a very French salad. It's red beets (betteraves) with Belgian endives and a vinaigrette dressing. I know a lot of Americans who won't eat beets, but the French seem to love them. They are often sold cooked and less often raw. On another day, we ate radishes with salt, butter, and bread as our first course and lentils as our second course. Again, very French.

Spring has sprung

On Saturday, our part-time neighbors who live in Blois came down here to mow the grass at their country house across the street from us. In other words, spring has officially started... finally. That's their country house in the picture above, and a picture of Natasha admiring, or at least contemplating the cut grass. The neighbors' property is about twice as big as ours.

So yesterday, Walt got our mower out of the garage to try to get it running. He succeeded, after having to figure out how to pump up the mower's two front tires. We had bought a compressor that runs off a car battery last year, but never tried to use it. Here was the occasion to do so; both the front tires were nearly flat. After tinkering with it for 20 minutes or so, we got it going. The next step was to re-install the mower's battery, which is removed at the end of the mowing season and put in storage. That went well. By late afternoon, Walt was able to mow about one-third of our (tall) grass. The ground had dried out enough for him to be able to mow without making too many ruts. We have about half an acre of land.

All these photos are ones I took with my Lumix ZS8 camera a couple of days ago, with the exception of the photo of the lawnmower. For that one, I used my Samsung smart phone. We bought the mower last year, so it's still new to us.

By the way, not only has the grass been growing, but so have the leaf buds on the grape vines in the vineyard out behind our back gate. That's another sign that spring has finally sprung. It was almost hot outside when I went out for a walk with Tasha yesterday afternoon.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS8 photos

I took these yesterday morning on my walk with the dog using a Lumix ZS8 camera that I bought in the spring of 2012. It was my favorite camera for years. I stopped using it much about 6 months ago when I got my Samsung smartphone and starting using its built-in camera. Actually, I bought two ZS8 cameras back then — one new and one used. Both work great. At the time, I wanted to have a backup ZS8 in case something happened to one of them.

These are some of the things I see when I go out to walk with Natasha the Sheltie early in the morning. The sun was just coming up yesterday morning when we were walking — me snapping and 'Tasha sniffing...