Traveling these days

An Egyptian airplane disappeared in the skies over the Mediterranean Sea overnight. It had taken off from Paris late Wednesday evening. I'm so sorry things like this keep happening — it's horrible to imagine... I would have been a nervous wreck if it had happened 24 hours earlier, with Walt in the air. The last two or three times I've flown across the Atlantic there have been similarly horrible events during my travels. A pilot crashed a plane full of people into a mountain in the south of France, for example. The Paris terrorist attacks in which more than 100 people were killed in a theater and several cafés happened just two days before I flew back from Atlanta to Paris. And so on. I'm not sure travel is worth it any more. For a long time, flying was fun. Then over the past 20 years it has become an ordeal because of security and planes that are more and more crowded and cramped. Now it's just too stressful, I think.

So Walt got back with absolutely no trouble. I left home at 1:00 p.m. in the Citroën, filled up the tank at a local gas station (at Intermarché), and drove little back roads up to Blois. It took me about an hour to get there. I was early, and I had time to take some photos. Walt's train pulled into the Gare de Blois-Chambord shortly before 2:30, right on time. We drove back home to Saint-Aignan and arrived by 3:30. We had champagne. We had a late lunch. Walt told me more details of his trip and of friends and family that he saw. He hadn't been to the U.S. in four years; I've been over there three times since March 2015.

The two photos here show you the Gare de Blois, now known as Blois-Chambord. Blois is a small city of maybe 75,000, and Chambord, one of the most famous Loire Valley Renaissance chateaus, is less than half an hour away by car. It was lucky that one of the trains running yesterday, despite the strikes, was the 12:59 out of Paris Austerlitz station to Orléans, Blois, Amboise, and Tours — direct. In other words, no need to change trains at any point and wait around in some other train station. And no need to haul a heavy suitcase off one train and back onto another. It's much easier and less expensive to take the train to and from Paris rather than drive your own car. As you can see, the station at Blois is not what you would call mobbed.

Waiting, and staying busy

Walt's in the air this morning, on an Air Canada flight. He should be on the ground at Paris CDG airport in about two hours. Then he'll race (I hope) into central Paris to try to get the 12:59 train from Paris-Austerlitz to Blois. It's a 90 minute train ride for him, and for me a 45 minute drive up to Blois to meet him.

Dinosaur Kale

The Télématin news this morning says, of course, to expect perturbations. Both the transit kind and the meteorological kind. They are predicting rain for this afternoon. As for transit, something like 75% the normal number the RER trains are running between the airport and central Paris, and approximately 67% of the mainline intercity trains are running. With any luck, Walt will get where he wants to go, even though passengers might be packed in like sardines.

A Fireball Tomato plant

Yesterday afternoon the neighbor from across the street came over and rang the bell. She and her husband were down here from Blois over the weekend, and some of their children and grandchildren were here too. As they were preparing to drive back to Blois, she came over to say hello and to bring me some foie gras they had left over from weekend festivities.

Squash seedlings

« On dit que le foie gras n'aime pas voyager », the neighbor told me, « alors j'ai pensé à toi et à Walter. » I had some for my « quatre-heures », which is also called le goûter, the French name for a mid-afternoon snack. There is more for us to have as an appetizer this afternoon when Walt gets here, and I also bought a bottle of champagne for the occasion. And I have a fig or two left over to go with the foie gras. Life is good, even when it's raining outside...

When I bought the champagne at the supermarket last Friday, the man ahead of me in line at the checkout stand looked at what I was putting on the conveyor belt and offered his opinion that the champagne I had chosen was one of the best I could ever hope to taste. "I tell you that because I know the Heidsieck Monopole well — I come from Reims," he said. Reims (or Rheims in English) is the big city in the Champagne region, where some of the very best sparkling wine is made.

I'm posting here a few more pictures of seedlings in the greenhouse tent, as well as a photo, above, of the elephant bush plant (Portulacaria afra) that has traveled several times across the Atlantic Ocean. As far as I know, this one started life in Salton City, California, sometime in the 1980s or earlier, spent about 10 years in San Francisco, and then came to Saint-Aignan via a new séjour in Southern California in 2003. CHM brought a cutting here in 2004, and I've kept it going.

Mowing and growing

My hands are sore this morning, and I slept late. Both conditions are probably related to one event: yesterday I mowed the yard. Well, not the whole thing, but a lot of it. It was getting out of control. And I have a confession to make: this is the first time since we've lived here (13 years now) that I've ever mowed the yard. I was nervous about even trying, wondering whether I could get the mower running or not.

Walt usually does the job. But I didn't want him to have to go out and mow as soon as he gets back from the U.S., all jet-lagged and everything. It only took an hour, but both my hands are sore from holding onto the lawnmower's handle (le guidon in French). It looks like the one on this web page. There is no padding of any kind.

You have to squeeze two fairly thin metal bars — one keeps the motor running and the other keeps the front wheels of the mower turning — so that they are pressed up against the mower's main handle, which is made of metal tubing of a larger diameter. Anyway, that's not clear, but the result is that my hands hurt. I'm really a greenhorn, I guess.

Here's a peek inside the greenhouse tent, which has been a great success so far. I'm thinking getting a real greenhouse out there might be a good idea and worth the investment. The seedlings look great, and are much bigger and sturdier than they would have been without the tent. It's still cold outside early in the morning, with temperatures in the 40s in ºF (9.6ºC right now). It was colder yesterday and the day before.

Red Russian Kale

Last week was the rainy one. That's why the grass grew so high, and why the greenhouse was a good thing to have. Yesterday was a holiday, so according to local ordinances we are not allowed to work with noisy power tools that might disturb out neighbors except between 10 a.m. and noon. Afternoons are off limits. The same is true of Sundays, but Sunday everything was too wet for mowing because of a heavy dew. And rain was predicted for yesterday afternoon, but it never materialized.

Tomato seedlings

As you can see, the only plants I've set out in the garden are a few collard greens that overwintered in the garden. I'm not sure they are going to be productive. I could probably set out some kale at this point, but I think it'll be better to wait for warmer morning temperatures before setting out tomatoes, peppers, or eggplant.

P.S. Truckers are blocking roads around several cities this morning, but not around Paris. Truck drivers are unhappy because the new labor legislation would reduce the amount of overtime pay they get. Train and metro strikes are scheduled to begin later today and are reconductibles, which means they might continue until the end of the week. The labor unions will decide day by day whether to ask workers to stay out on strike or go back to work.

Rain and strikes = perturbations

Saturday was cold and gray. Sunday was warm and sunny. Monday is dawning. I see clouds and a little blue sky. The weather report says to expect rain this afternoon. So my work is cut out for me, and it has to be done before noon.

Last year's vine tendrils

Here are photos of some things I've been looking at around the hamlet and vineyard over the past few days. I get to look around a lot because I'm walking Callie twice a day. The dog and I been trying to dodge a series of perturbations, or weather fronts, which have been moving over the area and bringing rain and showers.

Wet weeds

Walt is scheduled to get back to France on Wednesday. He'll land at CDG airport (Roissy) at mid-morning and then have to figure out how to get down to Saint-Aignan, which is three or four hours south of Paris. It might take longer than that, depending on how it all plays out.

Flowers in a hedge

Strikes are announced. Surprise! — we're in France. This will be the latest in a series of protests and mouvements, as they call them, against  new labor legislation being adopted by the Socialist government over objections from the right wing and even many Socialist members of the parliament.

Piles of tiles

On the news, they are saying that Paris transit workers will be participating in the strikes and that the métro and RER will be perturbés. Truck drivers are planning to block highways around many of the country's big towns and cities.

Vines coming back to life

Railway workers are going out on strike starting tomorrow (Tuesday) night, so train schedules might be chaotic on Wednesday and even Thursday. It's a good time to just stay home and not try to go anywhere. Unless you have no choice.

A chicken in a pot

It was so chilly yesterday morning that I decided to cook a typically wintertime dish for my lunch. I had bought a 3 lb. chicken at the supermarket on Friday, without a definite idea for cooking it. I had vegetables. I had broth and wine. So into a big stock pot it went, making me a nice poule au pot for my main meal. Well, a poulet au pot, really. There are leftovers for soup or sandwiches.

A poule is an old hen — what we used to call a "stewing hen" in North Carolina and is known as une poule au sol here. Stewing hens need long, slow cooking to tenderize the meat. That makes for a very tasty broth, with the right seasonings and vegetables. What I had was a poulet, which is a "spring chicken" and doesn't require such a long cooking time. Still, I simmered the poulet for about 2½ hours on low heat. The cooking liquid was about a pint of chicken broth, a quart of water, and half a bottle of dry white wine (Sauvignon Blanc).

With the chicken I put in cut-up vegetables — two large carrots, four celery stalks, five garlic cloves, six small onions, and eight mushrooms — along with some salt, bay leaves, allspice berries, and black peppercorns. I just put everything in a big pot and let it simmer, without first browning the chicken or the vegetables. The important thing is to keep the liquid at a very low simmer so that the chicken doesn't fall apart. It helps to have it tightly trussed up, and they are sold that was in French supermarkets.

The chicken, vegetables, and broth are delicious right out of the pot. You can add cream to the poaching liquid if you want, and you can thicken it with a flour roux or a cornstarch slurry if you like it that way. To give it a special goodness, you can take the chicken out of the liquid, put it on a baking dish or pan, and brush it with olive oil or melted butter. Sprinkle it with salt and pepper and other spices (smoked paprika is good) or herbs and brown it in a hot oven for a few minutes before cutting it up and serving eating it.

Callie + the plum tree

It looks like our rainy spell might end today. Last night a storm front went through, and we had some real rain (instead of mist and drizzle) for an hour or two, along with thunder and lightning. The past week has been a real slog. The trade-off now is that temperatures are dropping into the low 60s F (mid-teens C). It won't seem like summer — that's for sure.

In the photo above, Callie seems to be looking heavenward, begging the clouds to go away and the sun to come back out. (Where did that old French proverb that says en mai fais ce qu'il te plaît come from anyway?) Actually, I'm not sure what the dog was looking at. The wisteria vine was above our heads when I snapped the picture. Maybe a bee was buzzing around up there.

Just wrapping up one of the week's subjects: the plum tree. It's an opportunity to throw in another photo of the dog. Callie has been with us for just over nine years now. Her first summer here in Saint-Aignan (and on Earth, for that matter) was in 2007, and it was rainy and dreary from May until the end of August. Let's not repeat that experience.

The plum tree, which I grew by planting some plum pits in a pot (notice the alliteration), has been growing for about the same amount of time (since 2007 or 2008). It's actually two trees conjoined. I planted the two of them together with the idea that I'd eventually cut the punier one down, but I never did. So now they are twin trees, and they are full of little red plums.

The radish surplus

Walt planted a row or two of radishes before he left for drier climes. I'd been meaning to go out and dig some to have with my lunch one day, but with the wet weather it didn't happen. Until yesterday.

Yesterday rain threatened all day, and there was some mist and bruine, but just enough to keep things damp. Then I awoke to the sound of hard rain on the skylight windows this morning. The garden is pretty muddy, and weeds are growing again. So are radishes, even though the leaves have been partially eaten by, I think, slugs.

Why do I care about radish leaves? Because they are perfectly edible, and actually tasty, even with holes in them. As Tim says, you eat around those. You can cook radish leaves like spinach. Or you can make pesto with them if you don't have basil. And they can be cooked and pureed to make good soup too.

I decided to cook the 30 or so radish plants I pulled out of the ground yesterday. It's not yet salad weather, so cooked greens are still tempting. The radishes themselves — the pink root — are like little turnips (same family). Drop some in a stew and try them. When you cook the radish, its sharp spiciness turns mild and the texture is nice.

P.S. I cooked them with shallot and garlic in a mix of olive oil and butter and a little chicken broth and white wine. Salt and pepper. The radishes made a nice side dish with a sauté de veau aux champignons.

Shoulder season flowers

This is the shoulder season, as we wait to get the vegetable garden planted. We're having a rainy week, so all that anybody can do is wait patiently. We got nearly half an inch of rain over the past two days, and it's supposed to rain again this afternoon.

Meanwhile, here are some flowering plants that we've planted in our yard and around the house since we've lived here (13 years). The previous owners, Jean et Josette, left us quite a few plants — in the ground and in pots — and we've kept a lot of them going too. Our additions have included a lilac bush, above.

And one of the most spectacular plants we've added is a wisteria on the back side of the house. Above, an overall view of the plant as it looks this week and, below, a close-up shot.

This last plant picture, below, shows a flower in the making. It's just a bud right now, but if we don't pick, cook, and eat it, it will open up as a beautiful blossom by the end of the summer.

Finally, here's the afternoon weather forecast for today. How do you like the color coordination between the forecaster and the map?

Time to take the dog out. At least it doesn't seem to be raining right now.

Rouge ou vert ?

I don't see many or even any apples so far, but there are plums. In French, they're prunes. And the ones pictured here will become small, ping-pong ball size fruits.

The red ones are red now, and they've been red from the beginning. The tree itself, which I grew from a pit and then planted in the back corner of the yard, has leaves with a dark red cast to them.

The pit came from one of the plums in the neighbors' yard across the road. Those plums begin their life green, and stay green for quite a while before they turn red and ripen. At this stage, they look like olives. The one I saved the pit from, several years ago, had turned ripe and red, of course.

The plums that are green when immature grow on a tree that has green leaves. The tree is less striking to the eye, in other words. Less decorative. Each tree and each fruit has its advantages and disadvantages.

The main difference between the two types of plums is that the ones that begin green, and turn red later, are "freestone" fruits. In other words, the pits are easy to remove because the flesh of the plum isn't stuck to them. The ones that are "born" red and stay red are a lot more trouble to work with, but they taste good.

Cerises

It's strange to be spending so much time alone. My main company is made up of the cat and the dog, and my camera. One friend stopped by a few days ago and we spent an hour catching up on the local and personal news, but otherwise I've just been occupying my own time. I can't say it's been unpleasant. I've taken the car out just once since Walt left on his trip more than a week ago. At this point, I have only six nearby neighbors — the hamlet is made up of nine houses — and I've only caught glimpses of them as they race by in their cars, on their way to town or wherever.

I don't feel like I'm getting an awful lot done either. Mostly I'm maintaining, not progressing. I've been walking the dog twice a day, making my daily lunch, and re-potting some plants. Watching TV. Blogging, Reading. Fiddling with computers and tablets. Watering all the seedlings in the greenhouse tent. My biggest accomplishment has been cleaning out the sun porch. But I haven't shoveled compost into the garden plot or run the tiller again. Or mowed the yard. Now it's turned rainy. Oh well.

The temperature this morning is about 60ºF (15ºC). That's pretty warm, even for May 10. The prevailing cloud cover is preventing heat from rising toward the stratosphere. That keeps the mornings warm. The days aren't very warm, though, and I expect the boiler to come back on at any moment. That's what the weather is like here — as soon as clouds cover the sun, daytime turns chilly. It was the same in San Francisco.

Today is our fourth wedding anniversary. Walt is back at "the scene of the crime" — Albany, NY. I wish I were there too, because we had such a good time when we went to that part of the U.S. and up to Montréal in May 2012. I'm not lonesome, exactly, but it is weird to spend so much time not talking to anybody. We've been living together for 33 years now. For the past dozen or more years, we have spent nearly 24 hours a day together, since neither of us works for a living any more. My trips to North Carolina give Walt his only respite.

The pictures here are some I took on Sunday morning when I went out with the dog. (As always, you can click or tap on them to enlarge the images.) There are a lot of cherry trees in and around our hamlet. They're sour cherries, which are the kind that are good cooked but not sweet enough just to eat raw. They make good pies, clafoutis, sauces, and so on. I hope they will soon ripen, despite the current rainy weather. Tomorrow: plums.

Apples and blossoms

I think the title of my post yesterday was a little over the top. We are having spring, but it's surprising how few blossoms there are on the apples trees in our yard and around the hamlet. Often, the pommiers are huge masses of white or pale pink flowers in late April and early May. Look at this photo from April 2015, just a year ago.

Right now the apple trees are very green — or at least are starting to be — but there are few flowers. Above is the biggest pommier in our yard. You'll be hard pressed to see any apple blossoms on it in this photo I took yesterday morning.

Two smaller apple trees in the yard were severely pruned back a few months ago. Maybe that pruning explains why they have fewer leaves and blossoms than normal this spring. Or maybe it's just because of the wet, chilly, dark weather we've had since Christmas.

Over in the neighbors' yard I did find apple blossoms, including the one in the photo above.

And on the north side of our property, just at the edge of the vineyard, I took a photo of this little pommier that has a few more blossoms on it than ours do.

In a lot of ways, we'll be happy to have fewer apples than we have had in many past years. The yard is often covered in them, and they have to be picked up and disposed of before Walt can mow. Looks like that won't be a big job in 2016. In my walk-around yesterday morning, I did see a lot of little plums and baby cherries on trees in the area.

What has happened to spring?

We are having a very late spring. Or maybe just a kind of sterile spring. Yesterday morning I was surprised to see a small apple tree in full bloom over in a neighbor's yard. That made me realize that our apple trees — four of them — have basically no blossoms on them at this point, and haven't had any. Looking back at photos I've posted in past years, it appears that the trees should have flowered in April.

At the market, there are hardly any strawberries or asparagus for sale. Maybe there just won't be any this year. It's getting fairly late. April is usually the beginning of the season for these local specialties. It's kind of mysterious to me because we didn't have a cold winter. Or maybe that's the problem — having some cold, freezing mornings in winter is beneficial to a lot of plants. We have had long stretches of unusually wet weather since Christmas. Now it's dry and sunny, but certain signs of spring are just missing. Every year is different, I guess. Maybe there was an April freeze that I didn't notice and that killed buds here and there. I do see good crops of plums on at least a couple of trees around the hamlet.

Look what the cat dragged in

Cats bring you presents. We all know that. Most of the ones Bertie the black cat brings up onto the terrasse are little rodents. He has brought us brown wall lizards, moles, and various birds, including a pheasant hen, over the years. Sometimes the animals he's caught are pretty big. A neighbor tells us about seeing Bertie with a rabbit in his jaws one day.

From what I've read, the lézard vert is not at all rare in France.

Yesterday I saw the cat outside the sliding glass doors on the tiles with quite a bit of blood spattered all around him. He was meowing and looking confused. The doors were open, so I'm lucky he didn't bring his prey into the living room. Bertie seemed to be very interested in the big wooden shutter outside, which was open and folded back against the wall.

This green lizard was probably 10 inches (25 cm) long from the tip of his snout to the end of his tail.

When I looked behind the shutter, I saw the green lizard. He was alive and he was hiding. I think Bertie had injured him. I got my camera and a broom. After I snapped one photo, I put Bertie in the house and shut the door. Then I pulled the shutter away from the wall and swept the lizard off the deck and into the vegetation down below. He sat there for a minute or two and disappeared before long.

“Cotton”

Maybe somebody can tell me what tree it is that produces this kind of white "cotton" at this time of year. There are a few of them in the area — out on the edge of the vineyard and just over our fence on the north side of our property.

Could it be a cottonwood tree? I don't think so, after looking at Google images for that species — even though there is one (I think it's called un peuplier de Virginie) in a nearby neighbor's yard. I posted photos of this tree's catkins, then green but now white and cottony, back in April in this post.

The string of sunny, warm days continues. Flowers are bursting out all over. I'm working on potting and re-potting house plants. It keeps me busy.

This is day two of a four-day weekend, but there's no sign of our neighbors next door or across the street. The hamlet is almost eerily quiet. I guess I could go somewhere in the car, which I haven't started since Monday, when I drove Walt up to Blois to catch the train. He's in Albany now, by the way.