An ornamental cherry tree Chaenomeles japonica (Japanese quince)
Dandelion Forsythia Daffodils
Here in northern France we've been getting some much-needed rainfall recently. We also get some pretty skies as a result. This was yesterday afternoon. I took the two photos above from the windows of our house.
Yesterday's lunch was fish (lieu noir — European pollock) fillets dusted with corn meal and baked in the oven. It was also fresh broccoli florets tossed in olive oil and dusted with spices (smoked paprika, garlic powder, salt and pepper) and roasted in the oven. To complete the meal, I made tartar sauce and Walt made pommes frites.
Our "château" from across the Renaudière vineyard outside Saint-Aignan
Château de Montpoupon Château de Saint-Aignan
The ornamental cherry tree in front of the house was in full bloom. This year, we're still waiting. Our dog Collette, 12 years old at the time, was learning to appreciate the vineyard and going for walks without a leash.
Our friend Sue had come from Madrid, where she was spending a few months in a Spanish-language program, to spend a week in Saint-Aignan. We were able to enjoy food, drink, and sunshine out in the back yard 
The water level in the Cher river was fairly high, and it was primrose season in the yard and in the local open-air markets. We had never experienced March in Saint-Aignan before.
I decided to cook the dos de cabillaud in a steamer. First I steamed some little potatoes and some broccoli florets. I kept them in a warm oven while the fish steamed.
Can you imagine all the dust that the sanding produced? And it was going really slowly when I suddenly realized that we should go the the hardware store and buy a second sander so that the work would go faster. The little sanders we were using cost just 20 euros apiece. Above, you can see that the weather was cooperating, and being able to leave the doors and windows open helped get some of the dust out of the house.
Once we had finished sanding and throughly cleaned the floors, the painting could begin. First there was a primer coat of white paint. Neither of us had ever really done this kind of work before. In Washington DC where we first lived, and then in the San Francisco Bay Area, we were both working long hours at our jobs and didn't have time to do things like paint walls and ceilings. Besides, we had lived in rented apartments and houses from 1982 until 1995.
The do-it-yourself job was painting the living room walls and ceiling. We had lived with it as it was for nearly two years. The paint was cracked and peeling. It was a sort of off-white veering to gray color. Ugly, in other words. We had to move all the furniture out — a sectional sofa, a china closet, a big buffet, lamps, small tables, the dining room set, a big bookcase full of cookbooks, a big TV and stand, curtains and rods, etc. The room is about 40 m² (20 ft x 20 ft), and that means that the ceiling is that big too.
We moved some pieces of furniture down to the ground-floor entryway and we lived down there for nearly two months while we did the job. The worst part was the sanding the living room walls, but at least the ceiling was in good shape and only needed fresh paint. It took four coats! Confession: we didn't work eight-hour days. We still had to cook our meals and we also needed time to rest between bouts of sanding and painting.
We chose and bought green paint for the living room walls. We moved the china closet and an old chest of drawers into our bathroom for the duration of the travaux. It's fairly spacious. Though the living space was crowded, it wasn't really uncomfortable. I doubt that we'll ever undertake such a do-it-yourself project again. We felt a great sense of pride and satisfaction once it was done.
