Hosing her down

Yesterday was one of those days when interludes of deep blue sky with lots of clouds were punctuated by sudden downpours of rain. Our neighbor Bernard drove in from Blois to mow his big yard across the street from us. He can't come do it this weekend because he's working in a polling station for the legislative elections tomorrow. He had been out riding around on his mower for just a few minutes when the bottom dropped out and he had to quit. He gave up and went back to Blois.

Looking back toward the house from out in the vineyard
during a sunny interlude between showers

Late in the day I took Callie out for a walk in the vineyard. Walt had warned me that the dog liked to splash around in mud puddles when there were some, but I hadn't seen her in action. I got my chance. We've had three inches of rain over the past two weeks so the ground is saturated and water is standing in all the low spots. Who knew that border collies were water dogs?

When we started down the gravel road through the vineyard out behind the house, there were a couple of tractors working the vines farther out. Callie is afraid of the sound of engines — a car, truck, tractor, airplane, or helicopter passing close to the house sends her scurrying for a safe hiding place. Luckily, one of the tractors came out of the rows of vines several hundred yards ahead of us and putted on up the road, away from us. The driver had apparently finished for the day. The other tractor went farther out into the vines, toward the paved road over north of us. So our path was clear.

Wild dog running through a big puddle

We got just a few hundred yards from the house when Callie spied the first big puddles alongside the gravel road. She raced into the water and started running like crazy, splashing everywhere. Then she stopped and beat the water with her front paws. She ended up covered with water and wet sand.

She was obviously enjoying it, so I let her play. I figured if we walked a little farther, she would dry out. There was a stiff breeze blowing, and the air wasn't too cold, so it wouldn't take long. On the way home, I'd put her on the leash and keep her out of the water, so she'd arrive at home dry and clean.

Slapping the water with her front paws — what fun!

We hadn't gotten too far up the road past the puddles when I big black cloud started gathering on the southeast horizon. And sure enough, wind-driven raindrops started slapping my face. We had to turn back, or risk getting even wetter.

Here comes the next squall.

I did put the leash on Callie and kept her out of the water as we passed this time, but she didn't have time to dry out. We got back to the house and she was just too wet and muddy to take inside. And the rain stopped; the black cloud scooted by to the south of us.

Recovering from the shock of being sprayed with the hose

At first I thought I would just throw the ball for Callie and let her run back and forth chasing it for a while so that her fur would have time to dry out and most of the sand and mud would fall off. But I lost patience, and Callie too wanted to go inside. Finally, I pulled the dreaded garden house off its rack and sprayed the terrified dog's legs and belly to clean her up. It's just as well that she get used to being hosed down if she's going to play in mud puddles on our walks.

Great weather for ducks ... and for duck

Today is June 15, and we've already had more rain in June than we had in all of April and May combined — almost twice as much. We've had more rain in the past two weeks than we had during the whole month of March, which is one of our rainier months here in Saint-Aignan. And to think that we complained that May was too damp and chilly.

Sour cherries — griottes in French

Let me continue. We've had more rain in the past two weeks than in any whole month since I started keeping track of our rainfall in October 2004. Nous pataugeons, comme dirait l'autre. In June 2006 we had one-sixth as much rain in all of June as we have had in the first two weeks of June 2007. Is the picture becoming clear? If not, turn on your windshield wipers.

Cuisses de canard confites — cooked slowly for 90 minutes
in enough duck fat to cover them, and then drained on a rack

So it's great weather for ducks in Saint-Aignan. Or duck, which is the non-count noun form we use when we are talking about duck as a menu item. Duck with cherry sauce is what I'm talking about, using the last cherries we are likely to get off the famous tree out back, since we had more than an inch of rain just yesterday.

Cook the cherries and some cherry juice in a little
duck fat until they start to cook down and the juice thickens

Here's a translation of the recipe I got off the Lugar do Olhar Feliz blog I found a day or two ago:

Heat up the well-drained duck confit (heat it twice: first in a pan, and then on a rack in the oven). While it is heating up, pit the cherries and cook them in a pan [with some duck fat] until they just start to fall apart. Deglaze the pan with a small amount of (rice) vinegar, and then add in a cup of duck or veal stock.

Put the cooked duck leg portions on a rack
and put them in the oven to turn golden brown

Let the cherry sauce cook down on low heat for about 10 minutes. Finish the sauce by adding three or four chopped stevia (a.k.a. sweetleaf) leaves (to sweeten it a little and add some green to the sauce and make it look nice). Then pour the sauce over the warm duck confit.

Confit done this way, like Calf's Liver with Cherries, is the essence of sweet and sour, which is perfect with duck.

Add some balsamic vinegar, white wine, and
stock (duck, veal, or chicken) to the cherries and
let the sauce cook for 10 minutes to thicken up

Griottes — sour cherries — possess a delicious acidity that needs to be tempered by the addition of a little sugar, or some red-currant or red bell-pepper jelly....

Don't go overboard with the vinegar.

Since I had just finished cooking the confit in duck fat, I didn't need to heat it up in a pan. I took it out of the fat while it was still hot and put it on a rack in an oven pan to drain for 10 minutes. Then I put the pan into a hot oven until the duck pieces had taken on a nice golden color. The skin was crispy.

Pour the thickened sauce and cherries over the duck confit

I used two cups of pitted cherries, and I cooked them according to the recipe, but I decided to use balsamic vinegar instead of rice vinegar. I also added a dash of white wine for sweetness. I had veal stock, but chicken stock would have worked just as well, and I didn't have any sweetleaf (I'd never even heard of it before) so I did without. I also didn't add any sugar or jelly. The sauce was plenty sweet because the balsamic vinegar brings a lot of sweetness. And of course I had put in some white wine. I almost always do, you know.

Confit de canard aux griottes et aux tagliatelles

We ate the duck and cherry sauce with some plain egg noodles, followed by a green salad in vinaigrette. The sweet-sour sauce, bright red cherries, crispy duck skin, and succulent duck meat made a fantastic combination.

And after all that we had a cherry clafoutis [klah-foo-TEE] that Walt made for dessert. We ate all the duck but we have clafoutis left for the next couple of days.

Clafoutis

Life is just a bowl of cherries

Wow, that little artichoke interlude inspired a lot of comments. And I ended up with a lot of new ideas for eating artichokes. It's too bad that our plants are unlikely to produce any 'chokes this year.

I posted some topics last week about the time we spent with Claude of Blogging in Paris and Vieux c'est mieux when she came to Saint-Aignan. Claude has posted a slideshow of her Saint-Aignan pictures on Flickr and the photos she took at the Zoo de Beauval in this blog entry.

Cleaning up the cherries I picked, and enjoying a late afternoon
glass of Gamay and one of my favorite French radio programs

Yesterday was another cherry-picking day. I went out to look at the cherry tree on the edge of the vineyard a couple of days ago and realized it was still covered in bright red fruit. It was supposed to rain yesterday afternoon (but it never did) and I thought I'd better go get more cherries, which are very ripe now, before the rain ruined them.

Thanks to whoever owns the plot of land that the cherry tree is growing on. I hope you will continue to ignore its existence. Be assured that I will take good care of that tree for you.

By the way, this week marked the fourth anniversary of the day we moved into our house here at La Renaudière near Saint-Aignan. The first night we spent here, after four or five days of intensive and extensive house-cleaning, was June 12, 2003.

Life is...

I don't know why it took me four years to find that cherry tree. But given the five apple trees in our back yard, our generous neighbors' peach and quince trees, the new-found cherry tree, and our American friends' plum orchard not far from here, we don't lack for fresh, seasonal fruit. I might never have to worry about confiture again, since in the pantry I now have pints and pints of apple and quince jelly, as well as many jars of peach, cherry, and plum preserves, all of which I've made over the past three years.

So what are we going to do with these cherries? Walt is going to make another clafoutis, which is about the best way to have cherries in dessert form. The cherries are a little sour, so they are better cooked than eaten raw.

Duck thigh-leg pieces and a bowl of cherries

And I'm finally going to make duck with cherry sauce for lunch today. The duck is already cooking. I'm making it into confit by cooking it in a large amount of duck fat, which I had in sealed jars in the refrigerator. Walt bought the duck when he went grocery shopping at Intermarché earlier this week.

Duck legs for €5.10 a kilo — that would be about $2.30 per pound
if the dollar were worth anything. At current exchange rates,
it comes out to something like $3.05 a pound. Still, such a deal!

A while back I did a topic on making confit of duck. It's here. If you search my blog for the word "confit" you'll find several other topics about ducks and geese.

And here's what I'm planning to do today. I found this blog topic called Canard aux Griottes by searching in Google France. Griottes is the French word for sour cherries. And now I've discovered a new blog — Lugar do Olhar Feliz, a bilingual blog based in southern Portugal.

Trimming, cooking, and eating an artichoke

To trim a fresh artichoke and prepare it for cooking, the first thing you have to deal with is the stem. If, like the ones I bought, the artichokes have five or six inches of stem still attached on the bottom, the best thing to do is to break the stem off using your bare (or gloved) hands. It can take considerable effort, but if you succeed in breaking off the stem right at the bottom of the artichoke, you'll see that a lot of big fibers pull out of the 'choke and stay attached to the stem, which you can discard.

The other option is to cut the stem off with a knife. And some people cook the stem along with the 'choke, either after cutting it off or having left it attached. The stem can be a little fibrous, but there is also plenty of good artichoke flesh there to eat.

Prepare a big bowl or pot of cold water to keep the trimmed artichokes in as you work. Add a quarter-cup of white distilled vinegar or lemon juice to the water to prevent the trimmed edges of the 'chokes from oxidizing and turning dark brown.

Trim off the top ends of the artichoke leaves with scissors.
The 'choke on the right isn't fully trimmed yet.

After you've decided what to do about the stems and dealt with that, the next thing to do is to trim off the top ends of all the artichoke's leaves (they're petals, actually, but never mind...). Artichokes are thistles, and there are sometimes sharp thorns on the leaf-ends. Cut off approximately the top third of each leaf with scissors or kitchen shears. Pull off the very bottom six or eight leaves whole and discard them — they're usually too tough to eat.

Leaves trimmed and top sliced off, ready for cooking

After the leaves are trimmed, use a big, sharp knife to cut off the top of the artichoke. Hold the artichoke on its side, grip it firmly, and slice off the top. Now it is ready to cook. Return it to the water bath if it is going to wait a few minutes before boiling.

To cook the artichokes, fill a big pot with water and set it on the stove to boil. Add salt and some vinegar or lemon juice to the cooking water. Distilled vinegar works just fine. When the water comes to the boil, drop in the 'chokes and let them simmer for 20 to 40 minutes, depending on size. Test them for doneness by poking a skewer or a knife into the bottom (where the stem is or was). They should be pretty soft.

Cooked, draining, and cooling in the kitchen sink

When the artichokes are done, turn them upside down on a plate or in the kitchen sink and let them drain and cool before you eat them. You can eat them slightly warm or fully cooled.

Eat the artichoke by putting one upside-down on a plate and pulling the leaves off one at a time. Eat them with your fingers. Put the bottom end of each leaf in your mouth and scrape the soft flesh off the bottom of each leaf with your teeth.

Normally, people in France serve artichokes with either vinaigrette or mayonnaise. The home-made versions of the sauces are obviously the best, but commercially prepared dressing or mayonnaise is OK too. Put a little bowl of the sauce next to your plate. Pull off an artichoke leaf. Dip the bottom end of the leaf into the sauce. Eat. It's good.

I didn't take any pictures after the artichokes had finished cooking yesterday. But Elise of Simply Recipes has published the definitive guide to trimming, cooking, and eating a whole fresh artichoke on her food blog.

As you'll see, after you've eaten all the edible parts of the leaves, you're left with the inedible part called the choke, which is attached to the edible bottom. Scrape the choke off the bottom and discard it. Eat the fleshy, tasty artichoke bottom with a knife and fork and some more vinaigrette or mayonnaise.

The only other thing to foresee is a bowl in which to put the artichoke leaves and chokes as you pull the 'choke apart and eat the edible parts. Be warned: you'll have the impression there's more left when you finish eating than there was when you started. It's just an illusion, and you'll know that because you'll be feeling full at that point.

Artichokes

Do you ever cook and eat fresh artichokes? If you are in California, probably. Elsewhere, maybe not. Most of the artichokes grown and sold in the U.S. come from the northern California coast, I believe. In France, a lot of them come from Brittany, which has a similar coastline as far as geography and climate go.

But even here in Touraine, our neighbor François, who lives down at the end of our road where it joins up with the highway, has six or eight huge artichoke plants in his garden. His plants are about four feet tall and are covered with big artichokes — there must be at least two dozen of them. I'll have to go take a picture.

Our artichoke plants are just starting to grow now.

We planted artichokes ourselves a month or so ago. They are starting to grow. I hope they have put down a lot of roots by now. Somebody told us not to expect them to produce any artichokes the first year, so we won't. We have five plants, and maybe we'll get a good crop in 2008, if the plants survive the winter.

Yesterday morning I went shopping at the SuperU supermarket in Saint-Aignan. I noticed these big globe artichokes in the produce department, and I bought two for our lunch today. Each one is about six inches (15 cm) in diameter.

Artichokes from SuperU in Saint-Aignan

A year ago we were in Paris in the springtime. One day we took a walk around Les Halles. On the rue Montmartre, near the church called Saint-Eustache and not far from the famous restaurant called Au Pied de Cochon, there was a street market set up to sell produce, meats, and other food products.

I noticed that one vendor had beautiful globe artichokes on his stand. They looked pretty much like the ones I bought at SuperU this morning. We were staying in an apartment near Arts et Métiers and eating most of our evening meals there. The artichokes looked like something good to fix for dinner, steamed or boiled and eaten warm or cold with vinaigrette or mayonnaise.

So I approached the vendor's stand and said I'd have two artichokes, s'il vous plaît. The man picked out two nice ones, weighed them, and dropped them into a plastic bag. That'll be 29 euros, he said.

Twenty-nine euros!
I was flabbergasted. That's nearly $40.00 U.S., for two artichokes. How ridiculous can you get? I told the man that they were far too expensive, and said I'd changed my mind.

He acted like he was offended. "I'm glad most of my customers aren't like you," he said in French. I told him I was sure he was glad of that. He was ripping people off big-time if he was selling any artichokes at all at that price.

The lesson: in a French market, don't be afraid to say you've changed your mind if you are surprised at the high price of some item you thought you wanted to buy. And buyer beware. You won't be able to bargain — that's not really the custom in France — but you can always just say no.

How much did I pay for the two artichokes I bought at SuperU this morning? Well, they were 90 eurocents apiece — that's about $1.20 each, or $2.40 for the both of them. Compare that to nearly $40 for two artichokes at the market in Paris.

The dog blog here

Another day of Callie pictures. What can I say? It's what we do right now. Along with cooking and watching tennis on TV (the Roland Garros tournament ended yesterday, and Walt is going through withdrawal). Oh, and set up the new computer. It's all running now, and I've been using it for e-mail and blogging for a few days now. The old PC is history.

Walking through the vineyard, 10 June 2007

So yesterday afternoon, during the tennis finals, I decided it was my turn to take Callie for a walk out in the vineyard. I put the harness on her and got the retractable leash and my camera. The weather was warm and muggy, and there were some big storm clouds but I figured we wouldn't go too far.

Hoping the walk is over, or at least that the leash will come off now

As soon as Callie saw the leash, she started looking for places to hide. I finally had to scoop her up in my arms and carry her out the back gate. Once out there, I clipped the leash to her harness and we started walking. I tried to walk on the gravel road but she didn't want to do that. She wanted to go down a row among the vines, so we did. She would walk some and then just stop and sit down.

At one point, I figured I would just keep walking and pull her behind me. Since she's on a harness and not her collar, there's no risk of choking her to death. I looked back and there she was, lying on her back with her feet waving in the air, just letting me drag her along in my wake. Sigh.

Letting herself be dragged down the row

Oh, the first thing that happened when we went out was that I saw our neighbor Annick standing out on the road in front of her house, obviously talking to somebody I couldn't see. I walked over the introduce her to Callie, and Callie actually followed along on the leash for that visit.

Annick was talking to Chantal, another neighbor. Both were out working in their gardens. Chantal and Annick are both about my age and both have lived here at La Renaudière for many years. Chantal had already met Callie, but both women petted her and seemed to enjoy Callie's affectionate advances.

A puppy with a purpose: heading home along the road

Back out in the vineyard, once I got Callie off her back and we turned around to return to the house, she was fine walking on the leash. She just wanted to go home. It wasn't the most successful walk but, as they say, little steps. Petit à petit, l'oiseau fait son nid. She will get used to it.

Callie had a big growth spurt last week. She's getting taller and taller. You can see how long and lanky she is in that last picture. When she wants to jump up on my lap these days, it's kind of awkward.

Walking and riding with Callie

Now that my new computer is up and running, both Walt and I are focused on trying to train Callie to enjoy riding in the car and walking on the leash. We took the dog to the vet's on Friday for a shot and a check-up, and the vet said we really ought to get Callie used to the car and the leash while she is still very young. She'll be fourth months old on June 22.

The lock-keeper's house on the Cher at Mareuil, near Saint-Aignan

Day before yesterday, I put the back seats down in the Peugeot to make a flat surface, and I laid down a couple of big old towels to catch any stray vomit coming out of the dog while we took a little driving trip. I put Callie in, despite her trembling and sullen attitude. She sat on the towels for a couple of minutes, but pretty soon she climbed down on the back seat floor and hid her head under the front passenger seat.

When we got to our destination, our friends' house out in the country about 10 miles south of Saint-Aignan, Callie jumped out of the car under her own power. We walked around the yard and house and she seemed to enjoy exploring. I didn't bother with the leash. Then I put her back into the car — she immediately hunkered down on the floor — and we drove back home. She didn't throw up. That's progress.

People keep telling me to take her on short rides and to make sure that the experience at the end of each ride is enjoyable. So yesterday I put her in the car, this time with the seats back in their normal positions and those two towels on the back seat cushions. She went for the floor immediately, again. We drove just about a mile down to the banks of the Cher river for a walk.

Au secours ! Sauvez-moi ! On me torture !

I had put a harness on her and carried the extension leash this time. She saw those and expected the worst, I think. To coax her along, I had in my pocket a zip-lock bag full of little chunks of Camembert and goat cheese that I thought would make good treats.

When we parked by the river, Callie at first didn't want to get out of the car. I coaxed and cajoled her, and I tried the cheese, but she wasn't having any of it. She was pouting. I had to lift her bodily out of the vehicle.

Arrête avec ce fromage, je t'en prie !

Then she was willing to follow me along the riverside trail. I didn't use the leash, figuring that if I did she would just flop down on the ground and refuse to budge. After the first 50 steps or so, I stopped and offered her a chunk of goat cheese. She just looked at me with disdain in her eyes. I actually stuck the piece of cheese in her mouth. She spit it out into the sand. She was not a happy puppy.

So I just started walking again and she got up and followed. I tried the cheese routine again and she again spit it out onto the ground. This was the camembert, so I now knew it wasn't just because she didn't like goat cheese!

Hé, oh, la voiture est loin là-bas !

When we had gone what I thought was far enough, I gave her another piece of cheese and this time she actually ate it. I told her we were going back to the car, and I went ahead and attached the leash to her harness. Miracle of miracles, she didn't flop down and act like she had died and gone to hell. She walked with me, not just following reluctantly but walking right alongside and even getting out ahead of me a couple of times.

When we got back the the car, she hopped right in. That's also great progress. She still hunkered down on the floor and hid her head under the seat in front of her, but hey, you can't ask the impossible.

Houses and windows

I'm in the throes of setting up my new computer. Did you know that all the disk connectors for data and power have recently been changed? Now the disks have SATA, not IDE/ATA, connectors. Who knew? That means the older disk I have, the one with all my digital photographs on it, won't work in the new computer.

A house in need of repair in Chémery

Fortunately, I wasn't planning to keep that disk and use it in the new machine. It will go into Walt's machine to boost his computer's storage capacity. His computer is a couple of years old and is based on the old IDE standard for hard disks and CD/DVD readers and burners.

Typical maisons de ville, also in Chémery

Be that as it may, I did count on installing the old disk in my new computer long enough to copy the 120 GB of pictures off it and onto the new hard disk. Since that wasn't possible, I've spent the last three days copying all that data off the old computer and onto the new one over our home network. That has taken many dozens of hours over several days. But it is done now.

A house on the Place de l'Eglise in Méhers

I also have two DVD burners in my old computer that won't work in the new machine. Anybody want one? You need a computer that can use IDE-standard devices. Again fortunately, the new computer has a DVD burner in it. I don't really need two burners, but I do need two CD/DVD readers because I have two French dictionaries that require me to keep CDs in the drives to be able to run them. And I use them all the time. So now I have to buy a new DVD reader that will work with the SATA connectors.

A window at the château de Chémery...

Oh, and by the way, my nice old IBM keyboards won't work with the new computer either. I am sorry to have to give them up, because they are heavy, solid, and quiet. They've been a pleasure to use over the years. But neither will work as USB devices. They connect to a PS2 port on the old computer, and the new computer doesn't have a PS2 port.

...and one at the nearby château du Gué-Péan

On Tuesday I went to our one local computer store and bought an adapter that is supposed to let you plug a PS2 device into a USB port. I plugged it all in, and it didn't work. I tried it with my two PS2 keyboards and with my PS2 mouse. Nothing doing.

A window, shuttered, in the Salle des Fêtes in Méhers...

Then I looked more carefully at the package the adapter came in. It says: Adaptateur pour brancher sur un port USB une souris PS2 prévue pour fonctionner également en USB (adapter to plug a USB-compatible PS2 device to a USB port). My PS2 keyboards and mouse don't qualify — they were not designed with USB capabilities, I'm sure. They are too old.

...and a detail from the same window (a decorative screw head)

I went back to the computer store to take the adapter back and order a US-standard QWERTY keyboard. It should come in next week. Meanwhile, I've set up the French AZERTY keyboard as if were a QWERTY model, and as long as I don't look at the keys while I'm typing, it's fine. If I look at the keys, however, I get confused, because they aren't labeled "correctly."

Meanwhile, I'm posting a few photos of houses and windows that I took earlier this week when I was out riding around with Claude.

The rooftops of Montrésor, 20 km south of Saint-Aignan

Speaking of houses, in Saint-Aignan there are two old townhouses on the market square (where the farmers' market is set up on Saturday mornings) that are being remodeled for sale. One is finished and has been on the market for a few months. Work on the other house started in March.

The people doing the remodeling are English. They have lived here for nearly 20 years and they have remodeled several houses over that time. The new house is three stories with steep interior staircases. The living room and kitchen are on the ground floor, and there are two medium-size bedrooms on the second floor U.S. (premier étage in French). The third floor is a very big space that could be used as a TV or game room, more sleeping space, or whatever.

The ultimate in French housing styles: the château de Montpoupon

From a window on that top level, there is a drop-dead view out over the rooftops of old Saint-Aignan looking toward the church. The place would almost be worth buying just for that view — not to mention its location in the center of town, right on the market square.

We went to see the remodeling work yesterday but I didn't have my camera with me. I'll go back and take some pictures next week.

Callie went to see the vet yesterday. She has gained 2.3 kg in a month and now weighs a little over 8 kg. That's a gain of just over 5 lbs. and a current weight of 18 lbs.

The owl in the chapel

Leaving Méhers after the mayor's tour, Claude and I drove through a wooded area called La Forêt de Gros-Bois — Big Woods Forest — south toward Noyers-sur-Cher, which is the town across the Cher river from Saint-Aignan.

There's a sign like this one on the road we drive to get home
from Saint-Aignan. We have seen these two kinds of deer often
and once we saw wild boars in the Forêt de Gros-Bois.

Noyers and Saint-Aignan are at the southwest edge of the Sologne [suh-LUN-yuh], a forested area that is home to a lot of wildlife. Wild boars, foxes, hares, two kinds of deer, badgers, and many water birds and birds of prey are plentiful in the region's pine and birch forests, and there are many small lakes. The Sologne is known as good hunting grounds, and game animals are an important part of the area's culinary repertoire (along with the asparagus and strawberries that grow well in the sandy local soil).

La Chapelle Saint-Lazare in Noyers-sur-Cher

In Noyers, out on the national highway and just a few hundred yards from a big round-about intersection, not far from the river, there's a beautiful little stone church called La Chapelle Saint-Lazare. It's an unlikely location for such a jewel of a building, being far from the town center.

I haven't been able to find much information about the chapel. The Michelin green guide just says that it used to be part of a maladrerie, which is an old term for a hospital where people with leprosy were cared for. I suppose that's what we would call a leper colony. Another book I have (Les Guides Illustrés : Les Châteaux de la Loire, published by Hachette in Paris in 1924) says the chapel was built in the 12th century, so it's close to 900 years old.

The chapel's roof and bell tower

A house stands just a few feet from the front of the chapel, so you can't really get much of a view of it from that side. The chapel was built with the local limestone, or tuffeau. I has what is called a clocher-pignon, the bell tower you see in the close-up shot above.

Carved stone details on the exterior walls

Claude and I were taking pictures and she asked me if we could go inside the building. I told her it had always been locked when I'd been there before. And sure enough, the side door was bolted. On the off chance, I went around to the front to try that door. I was surprised to find it unlocked. I pushed it open and got my first glimpse of the interior. It's like night-and-day compared to the exterior — the building is a complete ruin on the inside.

Inside the chapel, fallen beams and stones

Claude came around to the front of the building and we stood just inside the doorway, taking in the desolate scene. We didn't dare go farther in — it looked too dangerous. Then movement above caught my eye and I heard the the swishing sound of beating wings. A big white bird flew across the ceiling and ducked into a hole in the wall just above our heads. What was it? It was too dark in the chapel to see much or take a good photo.

My first thought was that it was a pigeon, but I realized that it was too big and very white. It had to be an owl. Just at that moment it emerged from its hiding place above the front door and flew across the ceiling again, landing on a stone ledge at the other side of the room and looking out at us. It was like a ghost, and it seemed discourteous of us to have invaded the creature's space. We backed out and closed the door.

The owl in stone

We stepped outside and walked around the north side of the chapel. I looked up at the stone carvings around the building's roof-line and the first one I saw was, of course, a representation of an owl.

One final view of the Chapelle Saint-Lazare in Noyers-sur-Cher

After looking a my bird books, I think the bird we saw in the chapel must have been a barn owl (Tyto alba). There appear to be two races of barn owls, one with tawny-colored under-parts (Tyto alba guttata) and one with white under-parts (T. a. alba). The latter is the one we saw. The Peterson Field Guide says it is the one most commonly seen in Western Europe.

The French bird book I have, Les Oiseaux de France by Jean-Claude Chantelat, gives the name of the barn owl as l'effraie des clochers, which means something like "belfry scarer" — the verb effrayer means "to frighten." Other common French names include dame blanche (white lady) and chouette des clochers (bell-tower owl). It has a 36-inch wingspan (that's nearly a meter), so it's not a small bird. La dame blanche is sedentary in France.

Mayor of Méhers, merci !

Claude (Blogging in Paris) and I left Chémery Tuesday morning and headed back toward Méhers on our way to Noyers-sur-Cher to see an old chapel there. As we drove into Méhers again, we noticed the cemetery on the side of the road and decided to stop and have a look-round, as they say.

I had also noticed a sign pointing to public toilets in Méhers when we passed through an hour or so earlier, and we also wanted to visit those. So we went back and parked alongside the locked-up church on the village square.

In Méhers, beauty is where you find it.

Biological needs attended to, we walked back down the road toward the cemetery. Now don't get the idea that Méhers is a Disney-esque setting or an idealized movie set. It's just an ordinary French village. A road runs right through the middle of it, lined with newer (that means 19th-century) and older houses and farm buildings, in states of repair ranging from the impeccable to the deplorable.

Scène on the main street in Méhers

In Méhers, there's no traffic to speak of, so it's not noisy or dusty, but it also isn't knock-your-eyes-out charming or beautiful either. If you take the time to walk through, though, you see charming and beautiful things. That's what we did.

The general store on main street

Just across the road from the cemetery, which was our destination, there's a modern looking boulangerie-pâtisserie-
épicerie, a kind of general store selling bread, sweets, and groceries to the locals. It's a storefront that looks to have been added onto the street side of a big, newer house, not quite a maison bourgeoise but also not a cottage or a farmhouse.

Antenna and sign at the Boulangerie-Pâtisserie Pornin

Claude and I were busy taking pictures of everything, included a sign perched high over the front of the boulangerie and a funny little antenna above it. We were speculating about the purpose of the antenna and lamenting that the sign was so back-lit — the sun was still fairly low in the southeast sky.

The house across the street from the cemetery

As we snapped and chatted, a rather hefty young man in bermuda shorts came out of the shop to see what we were doing. He apparently worked there. « Vous prenez des photos du village ? » he asked. We said yes, it certainly was a nice morning for it. Claude asked him about the little antenna, and he said it was an old CB antenna that is no longer used.

This one could do with a little work. It's also on the main street.

Then Claude asked the shop employee if the village church was ever open to the public. He said all we had to do was stop in at the mairie, the village hall, and ask for the key. We had walked by the mairie, just down the street a ways — that's where the WCs were — so we said we would stop in after we had our look-round in the cimetière.

We couldn't figure out what this piece of machinery was for.

Claude pointed out that the shop employee was obviously intrigued, and maybe even a little suspicious, of our picture taking, but that he had been very polite and discreet in his interaction with us. Claude too was once stopped by the police and questioned about her picture-taking when somebody reported her activity as suspicious. She was interrogated in Normandy; Walt and I were similarly stopped and questioned in the suburbs of Albany, NY, last year, you might remember. In this case, the gendarmes were not summoned. I told Claude that the young shop employee probably didn't have much else to do besides talk to us, since there were absolutely no customers in sight.

Greenhouses in the cemetery

We spent a few minutes walking around the cemetery. It's most distinguishing feature was the half-dozen or more greenhouse-like structures that protected several of the graves and the plants, flowers, and knick-knacks left on them by the deceaseds' friends and family members. This is a typical French cemetery: no grass, just gravel or hard-packed earth around the graves and tombstones.

A sign on a fence along main street pointing drivers toward
a farm where ducks and geese are raised for foie gras

Our curiosity about greenhouses satisfied, we walked back to the mairie, waving good-bye and thanks to the shop employee as we passed. Just a little farther on, the village hall door was right on the sidewalk, and it was slightly ajar. A man inside was sitting behind a counter and talking on the telephone. Claude noticed that the hours posted on the door were 1:30 to 5:30, and here we were barging in at 10:30 a.m. We stood there and waited for the man to finish his phone call.

The front of the village church in Méhers

We apologized for arriving outside normal working hours and said we wanted to see about getting the key to the church. The man hesitated but then said he guessed he could open it up for us and show us around. He was perfectly polite and friendly. He got the key and we left the building to walk the few steps over to the old church.

As we walked, he talked about the village and proposals to build new houses all around it. I'm not sure how the subject came up. He said as many as a dozen new houses a year are being planned. And then he started talking about one specific plot of land that somebody wanted to build on.

Inside the church in Méhers, nice light and shadow

He pointed to it off in the distance, and you could see out across the fields from the churchyard to a distant road and little bridge. "Government planners rejected our proposal to build three or four houses on that piece of land," he said, "because they said the new houses would spoil the view of the church from the bridge over there." Only then did he tell us that he was actually the mayor of the village and had been for nine years.

Church Street in Méhers

"As you can see," he said, "the land we wanted to build on is a little valley, and the one-story houses we proposed would not have blocked the view of the church at all. But that's how the government does things in France. They never make it easy." He said he half expected the planners from Blois or Paris to put in their report that they wanted to protect the view of the church tower from out in the countryside. The Méhers church doesn't have a tower, he pointed out.

L'église de Méhers

He opened the church door and showed us in. It was a very high, not very wide place with a vaulted wooden ceiling and beams. The altar is registered as officially historic, he said. We looked around for 10 minutes or so, said our thanks, and let him get back to battling the bureaucracy.

We headed for Noyers and had our encounter with the ghostly white owl that lives in the Chapelle Saint-Lazare.