A painting in Blois

Yesterday afternoon after lunch, we drove up to Blois to see the château there. CHM, who is visiting from Paris (but who lives in the U.S. most of the time) learned from a cousin earlier this year that a painting depicting Joan of Arc at Blois in 1429 — and painted by CHM's grandfather in 1901 — hangs in the chapel at the château.

An archtectural detail at the Blois castle

Blois is an old royal town that played a central role in French history for many centuries. The most powerful counts of Blois, in the Middle Ages, were grandchildren and great-grandchildren of William the Bastard — a.k.a William the Conqueror — after he defeated the English in the Battle of Hastings in 1066. At least one, Etienne (King Stephen in English), became king of England in 1135.

The Louis XII wing at the château de Blois

King Louis XII of France was born in Blois in 1462. He had a "new" wing built onto the château there — the earliest existing sections and buildings at the château date back to the 1100s. Then François 1er, the mastermind behind the nearby Château de Chambord, took up residence in Blois in the early 1500s and had another major wing constructed, in Italianate style. Finally, in the 1600s, a third big wing was built, in French Classical style.

François 1er's wing includes this famous staircase
dating back to the 1500s

So it's a long history. CHM's grandfather, who was a painter in Paris in the 1800s, finished the painting of Joan of Arc at Blois just a few years before he passed away. The family donated the painting to the city of Blois, and now it hangs in the chapel on the grounds of the château. That's what we went to see yesterday. It had been 53 years since CHM last laid eyes on his grandfather's painting.

Above: CHM's grandfather's painting on a wall in the chapel at Blois

Below: my photo of the painting modified to correct the perspective

Blois is only 25 miles north of Saint-Aignan. It takes 40 minutes or so to drive up there. While we were in the château, a big group of Americans came in. They were probably on a bus tour. It was interesting to listen to their English, which was definitely Southern.

The St-Nicolas church (ca. 1200) and the Loire River at Blois

As we were leaving the château, a 60-year-old American — obviously American because dressed in bermuda shorts — arrived at the door just as we did. CHM stepped back and let the man go through first. "Age before beauty," CHM said as he passed. The man looked surprised and then laughed at the joke. I don't think he expected to be spoken to in English.

Le Château de Meillant

The château at Meillant is not a Loire Valley castle. It's located in the old Berry province, not the Loire Valley. Meillant in the Cher River Valley about 150 km/90 miles upstream from Saint-Aignan.

The château was built in the early 1300s and in 1453 was acquired by Pierre of Amboise, a nobleman who was the lord of Chaumont-sur-Loire, near Blois. The original building was fortified, as medieval castles tended to be. Pierre's son Charles 1er d'Amboise, who was at one time the governor of the Paris region, Champagne, and Burgundy, set out to renovate and "modernize" the Meillant château, but he died at the age of 51, before the work could be done. It was his son, Charles II d'Amboise, who finished the job in the late 1400s and early 1500s.

The southwest façade at Meillant is medieval

Meillant shows two faces to the visitor. The southwest front is medieval, with massive towers facing a moat. The northeast façade is highly ornate, showing its architectural kinship with the Renaissance châteaux of the Loire Valley.

Figures on a balcony

The style is late gothic, called "flowery" gothic. Charles II spent time in Italy, where he was the governor of Milan. So it has been said that "Milan made Meillant," in the sense that Charles II brought back from Italy the ideas for the renovations he ordered at the old castle.

The château de Meillant was also completely restored much later, in 1842.

The Tower of the Lion at Meillant

The main tower, highly ornamented, is called the Tower of the Lion, because there is a big lion made of gilded lead at its very top. The lion is the work of the Italian Giocondo, who worked with Michelangelo.

Giocondo's lion at the top of the tower at Meillant
(thanks to CHM for the photo)

CHM and I spent about an hour walking around the château and taking pictures Thursday morning. I just counted my pictures, and it turns out that I took 87 of them. I can't post them all, at least not today! But here's a selection, mostly of details of the decorations on the walls of the château.

Architectural ornament at Meillant

It's either feast or famine with photos and blog topics. Some days I think I need to get out more and do more photography. Or at least take pictures of more varied subjects. And then, at times like the present, I'm overwhelmed with subjects and pictures.

A day trip through the Berry

Yesterday CHM and I took a long road trip, traveling a big circle to the southeast of Saint-Aignan in the Berry region. The weather was gorgeous. We took the autoroute all the way down to the town of Saint-Amand-Montrond, which is just south of the city of Bourges and 150 km — 90 miles — from Saint-Aignan.

The château at Meillant, near Saint-Amand-Montrond

It took us nearly two hours to get there, even by autoroute, and toll was 9.10 euros. First we had to get to the autoroute entrance north and east of Saint-Aignan, and that took 30 minutes or so. Then there were several long stretches of autoroute where road work had one of the two lanes blocked off. There were plenty of big trucks on the road, so the going was slow. It always takes longer than you think it will to get to your destination in France.

We left the house at 9:00 a.m. and returned at 8:00 p.m. Below is a list of the villages and towns we spent at least a few minutes in along the way.

Saint-Amand-Montrond -> Meillant -> Noirlac -> Bruère-Allichamps -> Ainay-le-Vieil -> Culan -> Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre ->
Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre -> Châteauroux -> Levroux -> Valençay ->
Couffy -> Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher

Meillant was our first real destination. There's a beautiful château there. We then had lunch in Saint-Amand, where the autoroute spit us out initially and which we had to drive through to get to Meillant.

A shop on the main street in a little town in the Berry

Noirlac, near Meillant, has a very old Cistercian abbey complex that has been particularly well restored. Bruères-Allichamps, just a couple of miles north in the Cher River valley, is a picturesque village that is known as the geographical center of France. Ainay-le-Vieil and Culan both are the sites of fortified medieval castles. At Neuvy, there's an 11th century church modeled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. And so on.

Typical small-town scene

I'll be posting pictures of all these towns, villages, and monuments over the next few days and weeks. I took more than 300 pictures.

One of the things that struck me about our visits to all these monuments was how nice and helpful the people working in the shops and selling tickets at the various sights were. At Culan, for example, a young woman took the time to explain how we could drive down a steep, narrow lane and make several left turns to get to a Roman bridge over a little river down below the château.

We had lunch here in Saint-Amand-Montrond.

She came outside with us and pointed out all the twists and turns. "At the Roman bridge, there is a good spot where you can stop and take some pictures of the château," she said. "Then you cross the bridge and take another left turn to get back to the highway. There's a big sign that says the road is one way in the wrong direction for you, but you can ignore that. I do. I drive it every day, and I've never had any trouble."

The Roman bridge at Culan

I thanked her and told that, if a policeman stopped me, I would mumble and mutter in English and pretend I didn't speak French. As it turned out, I didn't have to bother, and we got to see views we wouldn't otherwise have discovered.

The castle at Culan seen from
the Roman bridge over the Arnon river

Of course, CHM charms everybody with his happy smile, quick sense of humor, and melodious French.

Champignons à la grecque

I've been making these champignons à la grecque for 30 years now. They are very easy to do. I got the recipe from Monique Maine's Cuisine pour toute l'année (1969), a cookbook I always come back to for standard French methods and foods.

I remember eating champignons à la grecque in little inexpensive Paris restaurants back in the 1970s adn '8os. Those are good memories.

You can serve the Greek mushrooms as a first course salad, or you can serve them as finger food to be stabbed and grabbed with cocktail picks. That's what we did day before yesterday when Martine and Christian were here. We opened a bottle of sparkling Vouvray wine, set out some olives, and enjoyed all that with the mushrooms.

Here's my translation of Mme Maine's recipe. I've adapted it to work with a pound of mushrooms. This is a salad, so the amounts of different ingredients are flexible. The important thing is to put in a good amount of lemon and enough tomato paste to give the mushrooms and sauce a good color but not too much of a tomato sauce taste and consistency.

Greek mushroom salad

1 lb. button mushrooms
15 pearl onions (or 1 large onion, diced)
1½ cups white wine
1½ Tbsp. tomato paste
1 large lemon
3 bay leaves
2 sprigs of thyme (or 1 tsp. dried thyme)
salt to taste
1 dozen black peppercorns
8 or 9 coriander seeds
3 Tbsp. olive oil

Trim the mushrooms and wash them under running water. Rinse them in water with a little lemon juice added to it.

Peel the pearl onions, leaving them whole. Put the mushrooms and onions in a saucepan with the wine, the tomato paste, the lemon slices, and all the herbs and spices.

Add enough water so that everything is covered. Put the pot on medium heat and let it simmer for 20 to 30 minutes.

When the mushrooms are done, take the pot off the heat and let it cool. Stir in the olive oil. Pour the mushrooms into a serving dish and keep in the refrigerator until serving time.

Here is the Monique Maine recipe in French:

Champignons à la grecque

300 g de petits champignons de Paris
10 petits oignons
¼ l de vin blanc sec
1 c. à soupe de concentré de tomate
1 citron
2 feuilles de laurier
thym
sel
poivre en grains
5 ou 6 grains de coriandre
2 c. à soupe d'huile d'olive

Ôtez le bout terreux des champignons, lavez-les à l'eau courante, puis passez-les à l'eau citronnée. Épluchez les oignons, laissez-les entiers. Mettez les légumes dans une cocotte, ajoutez le vin blanc, le concentré, le citron coupé en tranches et tous les aromates. Complétez avec un peu d'eau si les légumes ne sont pas assez mouillés. Faites cuire 20 mn à feu moyen. Ôtez la cocotte du feu et laissez refroidir, ajoutez alors l'huile d'olive. Versez dans le plat de service et mettez au frais.

Another indoor barbecue

We woke up to gray skies and showers yesterday, and during the morning it rained pretty hard off and on. That was because we had planned to have a barbecue with some friends from Belgium, Martine (Ladybird) and Christian. We were able to sit out on the deck to have our apéritifs, but it was too damp and windy for us to be able to eat outdoors.

So we were forced to move our barbecue indoors once again. We're getting used to that necessity. For lunch, I made some champignons à la grecque. I'll post a recipe later. Walt made a big grated carrot salad and a pear-amandine tart. We also had pasta with our radish-greens pesto. Martine and Christian brought some steaks, which we cooked in a pan on the stove instead of over the wood fire we had envisioned.

We had a really good time. Martine's native language is Flemish, but she is perfectly fluent in French and in English. Christian's native language is French — he's a native of Brussels. He speaks some Flemish and English too. We spoke French at lunch, which started at noon and ended with dessert, coffee, and digestifs at 4:30 or so.

We talked a lot about the political and linguistic situation in Belgium, which seems more and more to be a country divided along language lines. There are a lot of hard-core Flemish activists who want to ban French from their part of the country, which is the west and north. A lot of the Wallons, the French speaking Belgians in the south and east, say when polled that they wouldn't mind being part of France. Brussels is a world apart. It's more or less a French speaking enclave that is now surrounded by Flemish-speaking suburbs.

Anyway, that's probably a pretty superficial view of the situation. I've been to Belgium a few times, but years ago, and I'm certainly no expert.

Christian, especially, really liked our neighbors the Guerriers' red wine made with the local Côt grapes. That's Malbec outside the Loire Valley, except in the Cahors area where it's called Auxerrois. It's all the same grape. Christian and Martine plan to come back to Saint-Aignan on Thursday so we can go talk to Jean-Noël and Chantal Guerrier, taste some more wines, and buy some.

OK, this morning it's off to get a haircut at Mme Barbier's salon de coiffure. No time to dilly-dally. The pictures in this post are some more I took at Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe on Saturday.

Saint-Savin stories and coincidences

Here's my story about Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, where we drove to see the church on Saturday. It's about 100 km (60 miles) south of Saint-Aignan, in the Vienne département and the old Poitou province.

In the 1970s, I spent a lot of time in Paris, but I also spent a lot of time in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, at the university there. I was a graduate student and teaching assistant for French language courses. To make ends meet, I also worked part time in the offices of the American Association of Teachers of French, which had its headquarters in Champaign at the time.

At the AATF office, we had a big closet full of travel posters that were donated to the association by the French tourist office for distribution to teachers around the U.S. We advertised them — they were free to members — in our publications. Teachers would write in for posters to decorate their classrooms, and we would send some out. We employees also helped ourselves — we were teachers and members too.

One of the posters I liked was a photograph of a river and a bridge, with a church in the background. It was all blue sky and blue water, and the church spire was exceptionally tall and pointy. The words on the poster said Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, a place I had never heard of.

In 1979 I moved to Paris and spent three years there. Then I moved to Washington DC, where I ended up with a job as a translator — thanks to CHM, who is visiting us now in Saint-Aignan. He hired me in January 1983, and we've been friends ever since. In 1986, Walt and I left DC and moved to San Francisco to seek new opportunities and a better environment.

In 1989, Walt and I took a trip to France. We did a week-long driving tour, from Grenoble to Toulouse and on to Bordeaux and Paris. Along the way, we decided to drive through Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, because we had the poster and wanted to see the real place. It was just east of the city of Poitiers. We went to Saint-Savin and saw the church from the outside. We didn't know about the historic frescoes.

A few years later, Walt had that poster of Saint-Savin and some others mounted on boards at a frame shop in Berkeley. We figure it must have been in 1990 or 1991. We hung the travel posters on a wall in our apartment. Not long after that, CHM visited us in California for the first time. He saw the poster, and said, can that really be Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe? I spent some time there in the 1940s, during the war.

CHM was a teenager during World War II. He, his mother, and his older brother cleared out of Paris when the Germans invaded and went to spend time out in the country, out of harm's way. They knew people in Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe and took refuge there.

We told CHM about making a point of driving to Saint-Savin to see the place on our 1989 trip around France, because of the poster. Did you see the frescoes? he asked. No — what frescoes? Oh là là, CHM said, they are amazing and you didn't even go into the church. Quel dommage ! Oh well, we were on a road trip. We had just breezed through the town and checked it off our list.

I think it was an amazing coincidence that I had that poster showing a place that was so important in CHM's life.

It wasn't until June 2006 that I finally went to Saint-Savin with CHM and actually went inside the church. Unfortunately, major restoration work was under way there, and half the church was walled off and closed to the public. The half that was open was dark and dusty because of the restoration work. We didn't see much.

In June 2007 when CHM came to visit, we knew the Saint-Savin church was still half closed up for the restoration work. In June 2008 CHM came back and he sent an e-mail to the tourist office in Saint-Savin. The restoration work would be finished in about a month, he was told. That was too late.

So it was only on Saturday, at least 30 years since I first heard the name Saint-Savin-Savin-sur-Gartempe, and nearly 70 years since CHM first saw the town and the church, that I finally got to go into the building and admire those frescoes. They call it the Sistine Chapel of France.

Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe: gorgeous frescoes

It's hard to do things all day — pick and de-stem and pit cherries, cook, shop, tour around, and visit with friends — and to blog about it all at the same time. Not to mention take and process pictures. I'm just barely keeping up.

Yesterday CHM and I drove down to Preuilly-sur-Claise to visit with Susan and Simon of Days on the Claise. We had a beautiful day for it. It takes an hour or a little more to drive down there, and we arrived in time to go have a look around in S & S's new garden and fruit orchard for an hour or so before heading to the Restaurant de l'Image for lunch.

After lunch, we visited three churches. The first was the one in Preuilly itself. The second, and by far the most impressive and interesting, was the church in the town of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, 30 minutes of so south of Preuilly. The third was the abbey church at Fontgombault. All are worth a visit.

CHM and Susan outside the church
at Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe

I'm posting pictures from Saint-Savin here. The church dates back to the early 12th century and is decorated all inside with polychrome frescoes that date from that same period. It's hard to take pictures because they ask you not to use a flash and the light, while bright for the interior of a church, is not quite sufficient. A tripod would help but I didn't have one with me yesterday.

Susan and Simon posted some nice pictures on Days on the Claise this morning. Have a look.

This morning we're headed over to the market in Noyers-sur-Cher, and probably to the supermarket, to get some things we need for our lunch with Martine (here's a link to her blog) tomorrow. We're still hoping for nice weather for our barbecue, but it's looking kind of iffy.

Rabbit in a cherry & red wine sauce

It's cherry season in the Loire Valley. Or it's at least the season for sour cherries, called cerises acides in French. Sour cherries are not the sweet kind you eat raw and plain, but the ones that are good for making jam, cakes and clafoutis, and sauces. Sweet cherries ripen a little later.

A couple of years ago we had a big cherry crop around Saint-Aignan. At the time, I made a cherry sauce that I served with duck legs that had been slow-cooked in duck fat — confit de canard. I posted about it here and in a couple of blog posts in the days before that one (May and June 2007).

Sour cherries on the tree

This year I had the idea that rabbit cooked in a cherry sauce might be good, so I looked up recipes on the Internet. I found several of them. The one that caught my eye was rabbit cooked in red wine with cherries. But there was also one for rabbit cooked with cherries and white wine. I kind of took what I considered to be the best elements of the two recipes and made my own version.

As an appetizer, we had céleri rémoulade with black olives

You could certainly make the same thing using chicken instead of rabbit. But you need to find some sour cherries.

Here is my recipe in English, based on two recipes in French:

Rabbit with sour cherries and red wine

1 rabbit (2 to 3 lbs.), cut into 6 or 7 pieces
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, crushed or pressed
1 herb bouquet (thyme, rosemary, parsley, bay leaf)
6 oz. pork lardons (diced bacon)
½ bottle red wine (1½ cups)
a pinch of celery seed
3 allspice berries
salt and pepper
1 lb. of sour cherries, de-stemmed and pitted
1 Tbsp. red-currant jelly

Sauté the chopped onion, crushed garlic, and diced bacon with the rabbit (or chicken) pieces in a big pan so that everything starts to take on a golden brown color. You can use butter, oil, or a combination in the frying pan.

One rabbit, cut up. The liver and kidneys are good to eat too.

When it's browned, pour on the red wine. Add the herbs, spices, and salt and pepper to the pan along with enough water so that the rabbit or chicken pieces are just barely covered by liquid. Let the pan simmer on low heat for 45 minutes.

Finally, add the cherries to the pan along with the jelly. Stir the cherries into the sauce and leave the pan on the heat to simmer for another 10 to 15 minutes.

Notes: You could use 2 to 3 lbs. of chicken pieces instead of rabbit. The bacon is optional but does give good flavor. Instead of allspice berries, you could use a pinch of ground allspice, cinnamon, or nutmeg (or a combination). Instead of celery seed, you could add a stalk of celery to the sauce. And instead of red-currant jelly, you could use apple, grape, or other jelly, or you could use a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of vinegar.

Rabbit with cherries and red wine

Voilà. The sour cherries give a lemony tartness to the sauce, and the red wine gives it a nice red color. The rabbit or chicken pieces take on a reddish color but the meat is very white when you cut into it. Serve it with pasta or boiled potatoes, and green salad.

I had picked a big bucket of cherries yesterday morning, and when I weighed them I had more than 4 lbs. (2 kg). I obviously had a lot more than I needed for the rabbit recipe. Walt made a clafoutis with about half of what remained, and then I put the other half up in eau-de-vie (clear fruit brandy).

Clafoutis aux cerises

Putting cherries in brandy is a quick and easy way to preserve them. You need to sterilize the jar or jars you use first — plunge them into boiling water, along with their lids, for a few minutes. Take them out with tongs and don't touch them with your fingers. Fill the jars with washed, raw cherries whose stems you've cut down to about an inch long. Pour sugar syrup to fill the jar about one-quarter of the way and then fill it with brandy.

Two jars of cerises à l'eau-de-vie — cherries in clear fruit brandy

In France, you can buy clear fruit brandy for this purpose in the supermarkets. I paid 10 euros for a liter of brandy, and I used about half of it to make two big jars of preserved cherries. They'll be ready to eat in about three months. And the sweetened brandy will be good to sip, too.

North and south in France

I ventured into Northern France yesterday. That means I went north of the Loire River, which is a frequently cited boundary between the two halves of the country. Blois is on the northern side of the Loire too, but Saint-Aignan is 25 miles south. We are, by some accounts, in southern France here. Our climate is milder, people from up north tell us.

It was a long day, but the weather cooperated. I left the house at 7:45 yesterday morning and didn't get back home until 8:45 p.m. I only got lost twice — well, not really lost, but I made wrong turns and had to backtrack.

In the middle of the day, I visited some people (with CHM) who have a beautiful garden full of flowers on a hillside, in the area south of Paris. We spent an hour or more in the garden taking photos of flowers and insects.

The Loire is a big lazy river. At Gien, east of Orléans, the water
level is low and grass has taken over a large part of the riverbed.

Then we had a light lunch and spent a lot of time talking about memories of World War II and Paris back then. Of course, I wasn't even born so I didn't have any memories to share. But it was an interesting conversation, and the food was delicious (this is France after all). We left at 3:00 or so to drive back.

The church and château at Gien

Rather than driving directly back to Saint-Aignan, we took a long afternoon detour over to the area around the town of Gien, east of Orléans on the Loire. I'd been to Gien many years ago, and I wanted to see it again. It's a town famous for the faïence, or china, made there. I was surprised at how big and bustling it seemed. When I was there before, I lived in Paris, so I guess Gien seemed like a sleepy little town to me then. Now, seen from a Saint-Aignan perspective, it seems like a megalopolis.

Close-up of the old stone bridge across the Loire River at Gien

We stopped and saw two châteaux, one north of Gien and one south, before giving in to the clock and making an early evening beeline for home. Walt had food waitng for us. At 8:30, when we drove back into Saint-Aignan, there was absolutely no traffic. It seemed strange, because darkness hadn't yet fallen but nobody was out. I guess everybody was having dinner. Saint-Aignan can seem like a very quiet place at lunch- or dinnertime.

Meeting new neighbors, taking a drive

Yes, I'm driving two hours north and then planning to come home the long way. I want to go to Gien to see the château there. The last time I was there was in about 1980. Gien is a town on the Loire River some distance east of Orléans. It's famous for the china made there.

Then I might drive south from Gien to Sancerre, just to see that famous wine town again. The last time I was in Sancerre was with Walt in October 2000. It's a pretty town on a hilltop, with nice views out over the Loire and the surrounding vineyards. it's about a 2-hr. drive from Sancerre to Saint-Aignan, due west.

The sun is out this morning, and it is supposed to be a nice day. Walt and I thought back and realized that the last time we were more than 40 miles from Saint-Aignan in the car was about a year ago. I went to Paris with the car a couple of times last June. Nowhere much since.

Got pick some more of these cherries tomorrow morning

What's been going on here, besides the rains that won't stop? Yesterday, I went out for a walk with Callie between showers. We went out into the vineyard, circling around the north side near the donkey pen, where Callie likes to go. It was muddy but the dog doesn't care and I had put my waterproof hiking boots on.

I notice a person off to the left, slightly up a hill, examining the vines and immature grapes along a row. What's he doing there, I thought, and who is he? (It was probably more like: "Who does he think he is, out in our vineyard?") I get pretty possessive and protective for somebody who just happens to live nearby and who has no title to the land the grapes are planted on.

Wild flowers growing out back — peas of some kind?

As the dog and I circled on around and came back to the gravel road, I saw that the intruder was a new neighbor, a Frenchman who lives down at the bottom of our road. I've seen him out there a few times before with his dog, a very shy Brittany spaniel named Vasco. Vasco is 4 years old and is more afraid of other dogs than he is of people. He's nervous around Callie, for pete's sake.

The man, whose name, I gather, is Gérard, obviously wanted to talk. We stood and chatted for a minute about I don't remember what. When I said I was going to continue my walk with Callie, he said okay, and he and Vasco began walking with me. That was fine by me, as long as we were walking, because walking is why Callie and I go out there. It looked like it might start raining any minute, and there was a strong wind in our faces, the kind you have to lean into to make any forward progress.

Nice weed in the vineyard

One subject of conversation led to another, and after talking about the vineyard and my having lived in California before moving here six years ago and his having spent his whole career in the Paris region before moving to Saint-Aignan two years ago, he started telling me about his life.

He said he came to Saint-Aignan because his sister and his brother live up in Contres, 10 miles north, and he had been coming here to visit them for 30 years or more. He's 57 years old and took retirement at a fairly early age (like me). I don't know how his siblings ended up in Contres, but Gérard said he didn't have any other family connections in the area.

He said he didn't much like Contres — "too flat" and growing too fast was his verdict. He told me they are building a bypass up there to divert traffic away from the center of the town. That's a good thing, because there always seems to be a traffic jam in Contres (pop. maybe 5,000). The main street through town is very narrow, and if two big truck meet there sometimes one has to back up and find a wide spot to let the other get by. It's a mess.

We're going to have tons of peaches in a couple of months

Gérard said that out of all the towns in the area he had always preferred Saint-Aignan. It's got charm. He likes the vineyards and the opportunities they provide for walks with the dog. The landscapes and skies are beautiful.

He asked me what I do here, and I told him not much. I mentioned the blog, and he seemed to know what that was, and told him that besides blogging I cook, keep a vegetable garden, and walk the dog. People come to visit. The winters get long, but I like the life here.

Since he asked me such a personal question, I figured I could ask him the same thing. He said he had retired at the young age of 55 after working for 41 years with the SNCF, the national railway agency. The labor unions representing SNCF employees are (in)famous for having negotiated very cushy contracts that provide for retirement as early as age 50 for the railroad workers.

Gérard stressed that he had paid into the government retirement system for 41 years, which is longer than required. And he pointed out that he had gone to work at the SNCF when he was 14! He said a lot of young people went to work very early back in the 1960s. His father was not a government employee and was proud that his son had found a stable employment situation.

Gérard's son, however, finds it hard to conceive of working for more than 40 years for a single employer. "How could you not get really bored after a few years," Gérard said his son wanted to know. Well, I had a lot of different jobs as I worked my way up into the organization, is Gérard's answer. Those days of working for the same company or government service for your whole career are ending in France.

I think they've largely ended in the U.S. too. My father, for example, worked for the government for his whole career, from the age of about 23 until he was in his mid-50s. He had 35 years' service, I think. Then he retired.

Another rose-in-the-rain shot

The longest I ever worked for one employer was 6 years, from 1992 to 1998. I started on Jan. 27 and I got laid off (by Steve Jobs and Apple) on Jan. 27. That wasn't my last job, but by 2002 I was ready to toss it all in, and lucky enough to be able to do it.

Since a dozen or more houses have been built down at the bottom of our road since we moved here in 2003, we will likely be meeting more and more people like Gérard in the near future. There's more foot traffic up and down the road now, with people taking dogs and children for walks in the vineyard. We're trying to get used to that.

Summer is here, rain or not

All our routines are going to be shaken up over the next few weeks. That's a good thing. It's too easy to get settled into a daily pattern and not break out of it often enough. Get up at 6:30, walk the dog at 8:00, spend a couple of hours in the garden or in the kitchen, eat lunch, watch a movie, take another walk at 6:00 p.m., and so on and so forth.

Tomorrow I'll drive up to a town about two hours north of Saint-Aignan to meet up with CHM. He's visiting other friends there, and he and I will drive back to Saint-Aignan tomorrow afternoon and evening. We'll probably stop and see a lot of châteaux, churches, and villages along the way. We'll definitely have lunch in a restaurant somewhere — that right there is a big change in my routine.

Vineyard view back toward the house yesterday morning.
Yes, this is a color picture.

For tomorrow, there's no hurry, and the weather is supposed to be pretty. It stays light until 10:00 p.m., so we'll have plenty of time for a good look-round. I'll take pictures (as will CHM). Stay tuned.

The weather has been wet again for a few days. It's supposed to rain this afternoon before turning nice for a while. While I'm on the road tomorrow, Walt will be cleaning up the house, walking the dog, and getting ready to mow the lawn again as soon as the sun dries everything out.

On this aerial photo I've marked the walks we talk with the dog.
We live at the edge of a vineyard that extends about 2 miles SW.
Click on the photo to see a red checkered blob marking our house.

Friends from Belgium are coming over on Monday for lunch. That would be new blogger Ladybird Martine and her friend C. They are bringing the essentials for a barbecue, and we'll supply all the sides, the barbecue grill, some wine, and our back yard. We bought a new outdoor table yesterday, so we'll have room for everybody and a lot of food. We are counting on warm, sunny weather.

The grapevines are really growing now...

CHM and I (and maybe Walt too, but he's kind of a homebody) will do a lot of driving around, ranging out over a 100-mile radius from Saint-Aignan, to sightsee. We have trips planned that will take us over to the Bourges area in the old Berry province to see a Cistercian abbey (Noirlac) and a château (Meillant). And we will go down to Preuilly-sur-Claise to see blogger friends Susan and Simon, probably next week. With them, we want to go to a nature preserve in an area near Preuilly called La Brenne to see birds and other wildlife.

...and the linden tree is in full flower and full of bees.

We also want to have Susan and Simon up here to spend a day around Saint-Aignan have a meal with us. We're planning to make a big couscous, with lamb, chicken, and merguez sausages, and vegetables including carrots, tomatoes, turnips, green beans, chickpeas, and zucchini.

CHM has sent me a map of all the churches and castles in the Haut Poitou region, which is on the far side of Preuilly, a couple of hours from here. I imagine we will find ourselves touring around down there too. One town we want to see again is Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, where there is an amazing church. And, closer to home, we want to go to Blois this time. I've never been inside the château there.

Roses after a rain

Meanwhile, a good friend in California has put us in touch with friends of hers who ae going to be in Paris in late June and early July. I'll probably drive CHM back to Paris toward the end of June, and then our friend's friends (one of whom we've met before) will likely come down to Saint-Aignan for a visit.

And that just gets us into the first week of July. Other visitors from America are on the schedule. This summer, our neighbors across the street have invited us to one of their famous Bastille Day parties — that's July 14, as you know. Dinner, a late-night fireworks display over in Noyers on the other side of the Cher river, and then lunch the next day is the schedule for that one. They are inviting about 30 guests.

A dahlia about to bloom

I imagine that we'll settle back into our routine toward the end of July and on through August. With any luck, by then we'll be harvesting a lot of good produce from the vegetable garden. We'll be busy getting it all processed for freezing and maybe doing some canning — making tomato sauce, roasting squash and eggplants in the oven, cleaning and cooking greens and beans. A short trip at the beginning of September will cap off the summer, and then we will slide into our seventh winter in Saint-Aignan.