Almost tomato season

Thanks to Walt's watering regime and the good weather we've been having, the tomatoes are doing great out in the vegetable garden. The zucchinis are too. Cucumbers started producing but then stopped — I think temperatures just got too hot for them. They're starting to produce again now that it has cooled down slightly. We're still hoping for crops of eggplant, bell peppers, and jalapeño peppers later in the season.

As you can see above, Walt did some pruning on an apple tree next to the vegetable garden, just to lighten its load. I had done the same on the biggest apple tree a week or so earlier. Now we have to clean up.

It looks like we are going to have a fine tomato crop in August. There are several varieties out there, and they all seem to be thriving.

I wish I could say the same for my greens — kale and collards. Both have been attacked by a cloud of leaf-eating insects that I think are called flea beetles. I'm afraid the plants are all done for. I'll have to do a new planting in September for autumn and Christmas. I have plenty of seeds left.

Scratch that

Isn't it always the way? As soon as I posted about the dry dry dry and hot hot hot weather we've been having for what seems like months, yesterday turned out to be a rainy day. We didn't get enough rain to really wet the ground thoroughly, but it was enough to raise our humidity levels to record highs (that's just my impression).

At about 8 p.m., we started having thunder and lightning, but it wasn't very close and didn't last very long. The raindrops were big and fat. When it brightened up outdoors a few minutes later, I took the photos above and below out of one of our loft-space windows. We'd already had drizzly showers for much of the day.

I had a hard time getting to sleep after going to bed at 10, because of the heat and humidity. Just as I was dozing off, there was another little thundershower, with lightning closer that time, and loud thunder, but little or no rain. Callie started barking at the noise. Then at 2 a.m. Callie went wild barking again, and all the lights seemed to come on at one time. I opened my eyes to see Walt trying to chase a bat out of the room and Callie chasing around wildly barking at it. What a night!

By the way, here's another photo of that headless snake out in the vineyard. I'm posting it at a small size so you don't really have to look at it if you don't want to. You can click or tap on it to enlarge the image. I still wonder what killed it. Maybe it got run over by a tractor.

Callie gives the photo some scale. She was only slightly curious about the strange thing and didn't linger over it. As I said in a comment this morning on yesterday's post, this is not what would be called a grass snake in the U.S., as far as I know.

Sec... archi-sec

So far in July, we've had 5 millimeters of rain. That's two-tenths of an inch. Normally, we would have had six or seven times more than that. And it's been hot. Yesterday it was only about 86ºF, but the day before it was close to 99.

That's one thing about this area of France: the weather is seldom boring. You never know whether it will rain every day for weeks on end, washing out the summer, or whether you'll get long dry spells of hot weather like this one. We hardly had any rainfall in May or June either.

Certain plants

seem to be thriving

in these conditions.

 I've never seen

so many bright blue

wild chicory flowers

all around

the vineyard.

And as you can

see in the photos

above and below,

the grapevines

are bright green

and happy-looking.

I've been focused on

Paris for quite a while

here on the blog,

posting all the photos

I took there nearly

two months ago.

For the weekend, here

are some photos that

I took yesterday morning

on my walk with Callie.

And there is one very surprising photo in the bunch. Look at this dead snake that I saw out in the vineyard yesterday morning. Actually, it's been there for three or four days. I never in my life imagined that there were snakes of this size lurking in and around the edges of the vineyard. It looks like somebody cut the snake's head off with a shovel. Or do you think some animal like a badger might have killed it? It's at least three feet — close to a meter — long. And that's just what remains of the thing.

Here's a photo our house and two of the neighbors' taken from about a kilometer out in the vineyard. Ours is the newer house with the dark brown roof. The other two, with more reddish tile roofs, are old farmhouses. This photo is looking out over the Cher River valley to the highlands on the other side.

Views from a café, rue de Sèvres

Yesterday afternoon we sat out on the terrace/deck/front porch and attempted to enjoy the weather. And enjoy it I did, in a certain way. The temperature out there, on a porch that faces east, has a roof over it, and is completely open to the air, was 37ºC. That's human body temperate, 98.6ºF. It was the hottest day we've had so far this year, and maybe the hottest day we've had since 2003.

It wasn't so hot on May 30 in Paris, but it was starting to get uncomfortable under the sun out on the sidewalks of the city. I walked through the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, after looking around at Saint-Sulpice, looking for a café where I could sit outside and sip a cold drink. The Flore and the Deux Magots were too crowded. They are also really expensive.

A little further on I found a place where I used to eat lunch all those years ago when I worked on the rue des Saints-Pères and then on the rue de l'Université. There are two pictures of it in this post from November 2014 — it's Le Rouquet and has a white awning these days. It was empty last October, but in May it was packed. I found a table and sat down. I waited 5 or 10 minutes, but nobody ever came to take my order. So I just got up and left.

I walked on to the rue de Sèvres, past the well-known café called Le Sauvignon, and then another called  Le Sèvres-Raspail, where I remember having coffee or a glass of wine with Walt back in 1982. Again, every place was packed. On I strolled, until a little way past the Bon Marché department store and the Grande Epicerie grocery store, I came upon the place in the photo above, which was inviting.

Notice the menu just above the baby carriage, and look at the full-zoom photo of it (below) that I took from across the street.

All the other photos in this post are ones I took as I sat and drank a glass of white wine and a big glass of water at the café, called the ZéroZéro-Sèvres, as I watched people walking by. The photo of the line of empty tables is slightly misleading, because there were some people, including a crowd of Brits with several small children, occupying tables when I arrived, but they had all left just before I did. That's when I took the photo.

Walt and I have twice stayed in apartments in this neighborhood — in 1999 in a place at the intersection of the rue de Babylone and the rue Vaneau, and in 2002 in a nice apartment on the rue Mayet — so I know it slightly. I enjoyed sitting at my table out on the sidewalk and discreetly (I hope) taking photos of the restaurant and shops across the street. I was still just trying out my new camera (the Canon SX700 HS). I think the photo above of the menu posted across the rue de Sèvres at Le Petit Lutétia is pretty amazing, considering the distance. It's legible if you look at it at full size.

From Saint-Sulpice to Saint-Germain

As I started to exit from the Eglise Saint-Sulpice, I took one (blurry) photo of the enormous organ inside the church. As I said, it was fairly dark in the church. My eyes took a minute or two to readjust to the bright daylight of late May when I stepped outside again. The cafés along the streets were crowded, and I was getting thirsty.

The square in front of the church was all covered in white tents and there was some kind of chess event taking place. I walked up the rue des Canettes ("duckling" street, so called because there was a poultry shop here 500 years ago). It was mobbed but I never figured out what the event was. It wasn't Bastille Day yet, of course.

When Walt lived here for a few months in 1981, he had a room in a pension de famille at the corner of the rue du Four ("oven" street, where there was a communal oven or four banal 800 years ago) and the rue des Ciseaux ("scissors" street, named after a local shop 700 years ago). I think his window was one of the windows on the left.

We've had lunch or dinner many times over the past 34 years at the Pizza Vesuvio, which is at the top of the rue des Ciseaux. Between 1988 and 2002, we spent time on vacation in Paris nearly every year, staying either in a hotel or a rented apartment. We'd often return to favorite places during our two-week stays in the city.

The boulevard Saint-Germain was just a few steps away now. One of the restaurants I think I might finally go try one day is the famous Brasserie Lipp, known for its choucroute garnie. I'm posting a photo of it again because it appears they put up a new awning over their terrace since I took and posted a photo of the place in November 2014. I don't know why I've never had lunch or dinner there, especially since I've been hanging out in the neighborhood off and one for more than 40 years.

Around Saint-Sulpice

I'm not sure how interesting to how many people these photos will be, but they mean a lot to me. I worked at the Alliance Française in the 6ème arrondissement of Paris for two years starting in 1980. The Alliance is a big language school for foreigners who want to learn French.

The Alliance "campus" is on the Boulevard Raspail, sort of halfway between the enormous Eglise Saint-Sulpice and the even more imposing Tour Montparnasse. I didn't live in the neighborhood but I certainly spent a lot of time in it. My job was (officially if not really) part-time and I made enough money to spend some in cafés and restaurants. I had a lot of French friends and also a lot of American friends, including Walt.

When I was in Paris about six weeks ago, I took a sentimental walk around Saint-Sulpice. I was taking photos with a new camera, and the area seemed like a good place to try it out. The weather was beautiful.

I took some photos inside the church, but it was fairly dark in there and most of the photos weren't that good. Above and below are three of the better ones, I think. There's always something to take pictures of in an old church.

The Eglise Saint-Sulpice took several centuries to build — it was finished in 1870 but then was damaged during the Franco-Prussian War. The façade was recently cleaned, and it looks better than ever. The two towers are different, and the north tower is taller.

Street features

I was on the rue des Saints-Pères in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood in Paris when I noticed this elaborate piece of artwork on a courtyard gate.

I just found it on Google Maps street view. It's at number 52, rue des Saints-Pères. I worked for a couple of years at number 56 on the same street. This thing must have been there then, but I don't remember ever noticing it.

When you're walking the streets of Paris, you have to keep looking down to make sure you don't step in anything nasty, run smack into anybody, or trip over a curb. But if you lift your eyes for a moment, you see all kinds of interesting things.

You can see me in this photo, which I took on the rue des Canettes, near where Walt's boarding house was back in the fall of 1981. The street was a hubbub of activity on Saturday, May 30. More photos of that tomorrow or the next day...

This is one of the statues on the big fountain in front of the Eglise Saint-Sulpice, in the same neighborhood. How many times in my life have I walked through here? Maybe thousdands. If I look on the Internet, I can probably find out who this is. Yes, his name was Esprit Fléchier (1632-1710), and he was the bishop of the southern city of Nîmes.

I think this is the rue Jean Bart, very near the rue de Fleurus, the Alliance Française, and the Hôtel de l'Avenir, a neighborhood where I spent years working and wandering around. Yes, Google Maps just confirmed it. It's fun to look at photos that are six weeks old and try to remember or figure out where exactly I was when I took them.

Finally, this is a familiar modern sign in Paris. This one is on the rue de Sèvres, where I stopped and had something to drink toward the end of my walk that Saturday afternoon. Do you know it?

Paris around Montparnasse

These are all photos I took with the Canon PowerShot SX700 HS camera on May 30. As I've said, I'm still using it, but when I took these shots in Paris last May 30, I didn't yet have my newest Panasonic Lumix camera (TZ60). Walt says a lot of these photos are too blue. I guess... but then the sky, and therefore the daylight, was very blue.

Above is the 1970s building called the Tour Montparnasse. A lot of people consider it a monstrosity. It was built in the early 1970s. It's a great place if you want to go to the top of a tall building and take in spectacular views of all of Paris. And as they say, if you are up there you don't have to look at the building itself. Instead, you can admire the Eiffel Tower in the distance.

There used to be such a thing as free parking in Paris. You can still park your car for freee on Sundays and public holidays. But it used to be true that you didn't have to pay to park in certain neighborhoods, mostly residential, on Saturdays. And also any day of the week in August, when Parisians leave to city to spend summer in the countryside or on the coast. Nowadays, there is no free parking on Saturdays or in August in any neighborhood, as far as I know. Your best choice is an underground parking garage, mais c'est cher.

The city, which is — for example — three times as densely populated as San Francisco. Walt and I used to live out there (in SF). The city itself is the same size, geographically speaking, as Paris, but its population is 800,000, not 2.2 million — that's how many people live in Paris. I wonder how many people there are in Paris on a workday afternoon, counting all the office and shop workers who commute in. Two or three times as many, probably.

There's a huge hospital complex in CHM's neighborhood over between the Duroc and Sevres-Lecourbe metro stations. It's the 200-year-old Hôpital Necker, and the Hôpital des Enfants Malades (specializing in pediatric care). Right now, they seem to be expanding and modernizing the whole complex, which is located just on the west side of the Montparnasse neighborhood.

Here you can see some of the more modern and playful buildings being built on the grounds of the hospital (12 acres for so). It's called le centre hospitalier Necker-Enfants malades. The stethoscope was invented here in 1816. The Pasteur Institute is nearby.

Five Paris photos

I was in Paris on Saturday, May 30, staying with CHM at his apartment there. In the afternoon, I decided to go out for a walk in the neighborhood, just to take advantage of the beautiful weather and get some exercise before we embarked on our three-day drive out to the Perche and back down to the Loire Valley. I of course took my camera with me.

CHM's apartment is not far from the Avenue de Breteuil, which has a wide green median down its center. It's actually a big park. You can look up the avenue and get a view of the Eglise du Dôme at Les Invalides, where one attraction is Napoleon's tomb. On nice days, a lot of young people enjoy spending time out in the sun along the Avenue de Breteuil.

A lot of other people spend time in the sidewalk cafés around the city. This one is on the Rue du Cherche-Midi, I think. I walked over that way, dodging bicycles and other pedestrians. I took a lot of photos, of course.

I considered stopping in to have a look around in this antique store, but I wasn't really in the market for anything. I would have had to go get the car out of the parking garage and drive over to the shop if I had found anything I just had to have. It would be fun to have an apartment in Paris to furnish with things found at such shops.

I decided to walk over to a neighborhood where Walt and I spent a lot of time back in the early 1980s and again between 1988 and 1993. It's near the Luxembourg Gardens. For years when we visited Paris we would get a room at the Hôtel de l'Avenir — "the hotel of the future" — which at the time was very welcoming and pretty comfortable. It's been a long time now...

Since I was in the area, I continued exploring over toward the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood, also old stomping grounds. I worked near here as a teacher back in the 1970s. As a student, Walt lived in a boarding house (une pension de famille) in the neighborhood for a few months in 1981. It's nice to spend some time wandering around Paris every now and then.

Le pommier qui penche

One of our apple trees — by far the largest of the four — is leaning seriously toward the west. We don't know how old the tree is, but it might have been planted in the 1960s, when the house was built. Or who knows? Maybe it was already growing on the property at that point.

Anyway, it is leaning seriously and the trunk seems to be developing a vertical split under the weight of all the apples this year. Since about 2009, two enormous branches on the east side of the tree have broken off under the strain. Both times, the branches were so loaded with apples that just a little bit of rainfall added enough weight to make the branches crack and fall to the ground.

So now all the weight is on the west side of the tree, and this is a year in which the apples are very plentiful. You can see how low the branches were hanging just a few days ago. Luckily, we haven't really had any rain. Anyway, the apples are still pretty small and green at this point.

The other day, in an effort to keep the tree from toppling over, I went out and cut off a lot of low-hanging branches — and hundreds of apples (above). I picked up a basket-load of the green fruit with the idea of making green-apple jelly, which is loaded with pectin, I've read. I don't know if I've cut off enough heavy branches to make a difference... time will tell.

Our blogger friend Jean of A Very Grand Pressigny says the apples on this big old tree are called "Bramleys" and they are great for making pies, tarts, and crumbles. They are pretty sour eaten raw. We've already lost one of the five apple trees that were growing here when we moved into the house in 2003, and now it looks like this gigantic one isn't long for this world.

Beauharnais, Sancerre, and Maupas

These are three more or less unrelated photos. What they have in common is geography — all show scenes in central France. All were taken in early June.

The house above, in the Sologne town called La Ferté-Beauharnais (pop. 529), was for sale on June 1. Maybe it's not too late to scoop it up in early July, if you are interested. In fact, here it is on a real estate web page. The asking price seems to be about 70 thousand euros, considerably less than 100 thousand dollars at today's exchange rates. (After studying the web site, I think it might just be the corner unit that's for sale, not the whole house.)

La Ferté-Beauharnais is located about 45 kilometers east of Blois and 60 kilometers south of Orléans, in the heart of the Sologne natural region.The village « est doté d'un étang, d'un champ de foire, d'un cimetière, d'une école maternelle, d'une école primaire, d'un terrain de football, d'une supérette, d'un parc de stationnement, d'une salle de fête, et d'un restaurant », according to its Wikipedia page. I haven't found any specific information about the house in my photo, but it must be 500 or 600 years old.

Above is one more photo of the wine town of Sancerre, which is another hour east of La Ferté-Beauharnais and about which I have done several recent posts. It sits on a hilltop not far from the Loire River, which at that point runs south to north. It's Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir wines are famous worldwide.

Finally, here's a château that's not far north of the city of Bourges and near the wine village called Menetou-Salon. It's the Château de Maupas and it has existed since the 13th century — though it has been modified and "modernized" over the centuries. The same family has lived here since 1682. The château is open for guided tours.