Décembre 2005 (1)

December activities: burning maple tree leaves on the vegetable garden plot. Unfortunately, in 2022 the weather has been either too cold or too wet.

So the leaves have stayed scattered all around. I guess we'll hope for a mild, dry springtime. There's my 2005 collard patch in the foreground. In recent years I've had no luck with collards, kale, or chard. Snails and slugs have enjoyed my seedlings. Sigh.

A pale and frosty December 2005 sunrise. At this time of the year, we are often out walking around in the vineyard with the dog before sunrise.

Out in the vineyard on a sunny December day in 2005. The Renaudière vineyard runs about a mile west from our house.

The road down into the Cher river valley on a December day. At the bottom of the hill, take the river road to Saint-Aignan. And beyond.

Décembre 2004 (2)

This post, my second about December 2004, aims to show that the weather isn't always foggy, rainy, or frosty in Saint-Aignan in December. The sun does break through once in a while, and the temperature makes it feel like spring outside. Our winters are actually pretty mild.

   On the left above is our house in 2004. Back then, it was a lot smaller because we hadn't yet had the attic conversion done. On the right are the birch trees (les bouleaux) which gave the house its name. I assume that the name was given in the days before the village assigned street names and numbers to the houses here.

This is a view from the top of the rocky spur that the Château de Saint-Aignan stand on. The château is less than 2 miles from our house. The road running through the photo (toward the north) leads to Blois, a small city (pop. 50K) that is the largest city in our département (or "county"), the Loir-et-Cher.

   Here's a view of the church at Saint-Aignan from the base of the château, and on the right, a peek into the park that is part of the grounds of the château and is private. Visitors are not welcome. The château itself is privately owned and not open to the public.

Décembre 2004 (1)

Our low temperature Sunday morning was 23F, and the high for the day was about 30F. Yesterday morning the low was 40F, and the high for the day was about 52F. This morning the low is 50F. We're supposed to get rain today. I guess December is like that. That's why one of the major themes of the 12th month is food. And by December 2004 we were pretty much settled in.

   Food like the roasted turkey above, with a stuffing of chestnuts, prunes, and smoked pork lardons.
And French cheeses. To my palate, soft cheeses taste better in winter. The three on the platter
above are: un camembert, un neufchâtel, and un chèvre demi-sec.

A fir tree (un sapin) in winter in our back yard

  
Foods like pizza that cook in a hot oven are good in winter too — the oven helps heat up the house.
The last photo shows what our yard and our first vegetable garden in Saint-Aignan looked like in mid-December.
The grass was green, and the greens growing in the garden were too.

P.S. The Télématin news is reporting this morning that the current covid surge is just getting worse. An example is the city of Rouen, north of Paris in Normandy. There, paramedical and medical services are overwhelmed by people suffering with of covid or wintertime flu. I think it's time to put our masks back on.

2002, actually

Yesterday I posted about our first December (2003) in this house in the Loire Valley region of France. Well, it then dawned on me that the first time we ever saw the house was in December 2002, in the middle of week in which we also saw and considered about a dozen other houses. Walt and I agreed almost immediately that this house was "the one" and it was affordable. We ended becoming its owners in April 2003, and moved here from California in June that year. What did we see in this house that we liked?

     
 (1) A big level yard for a vegetable garden, and surrounded by a hedge that meant privacy.
(2) A rickety car port, as well as a full-size garage. These days, with two cars, we use both.
(3) A big bathroom with a tub, a sink, and a bidet. When in France...

(4) A large balcony, a sort of patio or terrasse, for summertime outdoor living — even though it obviously needed work...

     
(5) A wide, not very steep indoor staircase leading from the entryway up to the main living space.
(6) An interesting fireplace... which ended up not working until be had a wood stove put into it.
(7) A WC (water closet, loo, half-bath) with this old-fashioned look? Again, when in France...

We liked the fact that the house was on a dead-end road and on the edge of a vineyard. We also liked the big windows all around, and the fact that there was actually a working kitchen needing only appliances (stove, dishwasher, microwave, and refrigerator). A lot of the houses we were shown that week had just an empty room with no sink, no cabinets, an no counters in it. And we liked the fact that it had central heat (an oil-fired boiler and radiators), as well as a big attic that could be converted into living space. We had the conversion done in 2010.