Collette news: not good

Our 14-year-old Sheltie mix dog, Collette, suffered some kind of malaise yesterday. She hasn't eaten since Saturday, and she had a rough night last night. She can't walk straight -- she's listing to the right and very unsteady on her feet. She walks in circles and bumps into all the furniture, doors, and walls. Her eyes are bright and she is alert, but she's obviously in trouble.

She was fine, if a little arthritic, Saturday afternoon when I took her out for our regular walk, and was fine again Sunday morning when Walt took her out for their walk in the vineyard. But she wouldn't eat her breakfast of poached chicken when she came home. She had been coughing off and on for two or three days, as well. We were out having lunch with our visiting friends Sunday, before dropping them at the train station in Blois for their trip back to Paris. By the time we got home late in the afternoon, the dog was unable to walk normally.

This morning, Monday, we took her to the vet. He said she has probably suffered a stroke of some kind. He gave her a shot and gave us some pills for her to take morning and night for a few days. He said that if her condition improves significantly by Wednesday night or Thursday morning, there's a chance she will continue to live a normal life for a while longer. If she doesn't get significantly better by Thursday, her days are probably numbered. We will have a hard decision to make either way.

We are of course very sad and are watching carefully to see if the poor dog seems to be suffering needlessly. We don't want that to happen, but we want to wait as long as we can.

We made Collette a palette of big towels and covered her
with another one because she was shivering. She's sleeping.

Fourteen years is a long time to live with a being as beautiful and affectionate as Collette has been, and we are lucky to have found her at the Santa Clara Humane Society shelter in 1992. I'm glad she has been able to spend her last days and years out here in the country in France, where she has been free for nearly three years. For the first time, she experienced life without a leash. Her passing, now or next year or the year after, is going to change our lives in many ways.

I hope this message is premature.

When we came upon her at the Humane Society in 1992, Collette (as we would name her) was already scheduled for euthanasia because she was afraid of people in general, and was especially afraid of children. Nobody wanted to adopt her until we came along. She had been in the shelter for nearly two weeks. With us, she has had a good life, I think. Thanks to Merle for encouraging us to adopt a dog, and to Harriet, Cheryl, Sue, CHM, and Peter J. for being Collette's good friends over the years.

Last Thursday's activities

Our friends Chris and Tony left yesterday for Paris. They spent four nights here in Saint-Aignan. They come to France fairly frequently, so we think we'll see them again soon.

I had picked them up in Vierzon, 35 miles or so up the river, Wednesday evening. They came in by train from Nîmes, where they had also been visiting friends. It was chilly and damp, and the drive back to Saint-Aignan from Vierzon in the dark was not fun. It was raining and blowing, and there were a lot of big trucks on the highway. Visibility was very poor.

What did we do while C & T were here? On Thursday, we drove down into the village and went to La Poste to mail some postcards, etc. We took a drive out through the countryside south and west of Saint-Aignan just to see what it looks like. Then we went to the Intermarché supermarket to pick up a few things for the Friday-evening dinner party we were planning (fresh herbs and lettuce, pearl onions, etc.).

The weather was chilly and showery, but with some sunny spells.

For lunch we drove over to the Grill des Nouettes, which I call the Truck Stop. A lot of big trucks pull into the parking lot there at lunchtime, and many little white vans driven by local tradespeople congregate there at noon as well.

Le Grill des Nouettes in Noyers-sur-Cher

Chris said the décor looked like supper in a Middle West church hall, and it does. To me, it looks like an equivalent place in North Carolina, I guess. There are long rows of four-person tables with the typical French paper tablecloths. There are big storefront windows on one side of the building, and a bar on the left as you come in the front door. I would estimate there were 30 to 40 people in the restaurant when we arrived. It's a no-smoking establishment.

The menu is 11 euros (about $13.00 at current rates), and for that you get what you want from the all-you-can-eat hors-d'oeuvre buffet, a main course (meat and vegetable), cheese, dessert, and wine. Coffee is extra. On Thursday, the main courses were roast pork with green beans and tête de veau with I don't know what (because none of us ordered it — I probably should have, just to see what it was like). Tête de veau means head of calf. It's not something I've ever eaten, though I do eat and enjoy French fromage de tête -- head cheese.

The hors-d'oeuvre buffet has a lot of dishes on it. There are typical French salads including red beets in vinegar and oil, shredded celery root in a mustardy mayonnaise, tomatoes and cucumbers in vinaigrette, and so on. There are sardines and pieces of smoked herring, along with several pâtés and pots of rillettes (shredded pork). There's a salad of tuna, bean sprouts, and corn. Hard-boiled eggs and mayonnaise. All the standard French stuff. You take what looks good to you.

The main course of pork roast and green beans that we ordered was excellent. The pork was tender and juicy, and the beans were not overcooked. We were happy to have ordered it.

After the main course, the waiter or waitress brings you a big plate of cheeses -- gruyère, brie, roquefort or blue, goat cheese, etc., and again you take what you want.

The wine is local. Each person gets one quarter of a liter, or about two glasses. That's included in the price of lunch, as are the tip and taxes. When it says 11 euros, that's what you pay here, unless you have something extra, like coffee.

The daily special dessert was a charlotte à abricot, which was an apricot mousse formed in a mold with lady-finger cookies. It was delicious. Or you could have ice cream or fresh fruit.

This was only my second trip to the Grill des Nouettes. I was not disappointed, and Chris and Tony and Walt thought it was good too.

After lunch, we brought Walt home so that he could start preparing Friday night's dinner. He had volunteered make chicken in red wine along with a starter salad of black radish slices and Mimolette cheese. One of our guests had volunteered to bring dessert.

We dropped Walt off at the house and put our wine jugs in the car, because I wanted to go have l them filled at the wine "filling station" in Saint-Romain, about five miles north of Saint-Aignan. But first we drove out south of town about ten miles to see and check up on the house in the country that other friends of ours recently bought. They are still living in California at this point, and I'm keeping an eye on the place for them until they get here. Everything there was fine, and Chris and Tony enjoyed seeing the place. It's an interesting old stone farmhouse.

There was a very hard rain shower with some hail as we were driving back to Saint-Aignan on our way to the wine co-op, but it didn't last long. At the co-op, where I am a regular, I bought 40 liters -- that's 52 bottles -- of red, rosé, and white wine. That will hold us for a while. The red is a Gamay, the white is a Chardonnay, and the rosé is made from Cabernet Franc grapes.

When you buy wine in bulk this way, you take your own containers to the co-op. I have four 10-liter plastic jugs. The man at the co-op fills them from a tank the way you pump gas into the tank of your car. The cost of the 40 liters, which is as I said more than 50 bottles, was about 65 euros this time. The cost per liter varies from place to place, and some wines are more expensive than others of course. The Chardonnay here is less expensive -- €1.20 a liter -- because it isn't AOC but what is called vin de pays. The Gamay is AOC and is €1.75 a liter.

The young man at the co-op, it turned out, spoke good English. He was an employee I had never seen before, and he said he normally worked in the wine-making facility rather than in the tasting/sales room. We found out he spoke English because Tony made a joke and we noticed that the guy laughed. I think he was happy to speak English with us.

He told us that 35 wine growers are members of the Cave Coopérative de Saint-Romain, and that the grapes are grown in Saint-Romain, Couddes, Thésée, and Pouillé (all local villages). The wines they are selling now are the 2004 vintage; the 2005 wines will be released in April.

Tony wanted to buy a corkscrew and we had seen one in a display case with other merchandise for sale as we came into the tasting room. Tony asked how much they cost, and the guy who pumped the wine wasn't sure. He went to get a woman who was working in an office off the tasting room. As it turned out, the corkscrew was a give-away promotional item. Next time I go, I'll ask for one.

After loading the wine kegs in the car, we decided to stop at the Ed supermarket and buy some fresh fruit -- kiwis, apples, pears, oranges, strawberries (from Spain). Chris said she would make us a big fruit salad for dinner. And she did. It had a honey and yogurt dressing, with a splash of orange juice. We ate it with bread a butter and a glass of the "fresh" Gamay red wine from the co-op.

Flooded fields at the foot of our road. The Cher crested Friday.

Before dinner, Chris, Tony, Collette and I took a walk down the road from our house. We crossed the highway and tried to walk down to the river on a gravel road through some woods. But it was flooded and we had to turn back.

The road was flooded and impassable 100 yards or so from the river.

That was our Thursday. I didn't take many pictures except on our aborted river walk. The Cher was at flood stage last week as a result of snow melt along its banks. No buildings were flooded as far as I know, but a lot of fields were under water. The river is about 200 miles long, and it starts up in the old mountains of central France, south and east of Saint-Aignan. Here in our area we had nearly 6 inches of snow about a week ago.

The setting sun reflected on waters flooding the woods down by the river.

Friends visiting

I haven't had time to write blog entries this week. After spending a nice Sunday with our English friends (it was my birthday), Walt and I went into high gear to get ready to receive a visit from some friends from California. There always seem to be a million things to do to get the house ready. This time, we actually slightly rearranged our living room furniture as we were doing our spring cleaning. The new arrangement is proving to be nicer than the old one.

We did our spring cleaning early because not only are friends here this week and weekend, but another couple of San Francisco-area friends will arrive next Wednesday for a week. Then in early April our friend Sue from California will come for an extended visit. Meantime, we plan a short trip to Paris at the very end of March to see California friends there, and a couple of them will, we hope, come and spend a few days with us here. This is turning into our busy season, and it promises to be busy until mid-July this year, with visitors from California, Alabama, Normandy, and Colorado. They are all good friends and we are happy to see them, especially after the long, cold, lonely winter we have had this year!

We got five inches of snow last Saturday, the most we have had since we moved here in 2003. There was still some some on the ground until Wednesday, though it was slowly melting the whole time. Now the weather has turned relatively warm (50s F), with rain and quite a bit of gusty wind. We probably won't do much sightseeing with our friends today unless the weather improves some, and that's not predicted.

What we are going to to do today is go out to a restaurant for lunch. That's not something we do very often, so it's a treat. The restaurant I've picked is over in Noyers-sur-Cher, on the other side of the river. It's the kind of place I've heard described as a "white van" establishment. In other words, it's more or less a truckstop. All the French tradesmen seem to have little Renault, Citroën, or Peugeot vans that you see driving around all over the countryside. Our bread lady has one, for example. When you see a restaurant with a number of the white vans parked out front at noontime, you know it's worth a try. I've only eaten at this particular white van restaurant once before, and that was with my mother when she was visiting last September. We both thought the food was very good. Maybe I'll have time to write about it in a day or two.

Oh, and about the river, it has considerably overflowed its banks over the past few days. I don't think any houses are flooded — at least I haven't heard about any — but on my way to the train station in Vierzon (35 miles east) to pick up Chris and Tony late yesterday afternoon I saw a lot of flooded fields and several Route Barrée signs where little roads are closed because they are under water. It was raining and getting dark, so I hadn't taken my camera with me — no pictures. Maybe today.

Speaking of cameras (Dennis, this is an answer to your recent question), I have three digital cameras. One is a Kodak DC4800, which I've had for 5 years or longer. It's a three-megapixel model. The lens has a good wide angle (28 mm equivalent) and a 3x optical zoom. The 4800, which has been out of production for years now, is the one I use to take food pictures. I keep it in the kitchen. It has no manual focus, but the automatic focus gives great results in macro mode. It performs really well in low light conditions. In the kitchen, I often take a few pictures in macro mode sans flash, and then I take some from farther back by using the zoom and turning on the flash. Usually I get images that I'm happy with.

My other two cameras are an older Canon Powershot Pro90 IS, which is also good for closeup shots but which has the advantage of a 10x optical zoom. It's 2.5 megapixels (which I think is plenty). It's a great camera for telephoto shots, but it's a big heavy model (24 oz.) that I only haul around when my main purpose for going out is to take pictures. I do use it for inside closeup once in a while because I like its manual focus feature.

Finally, I have a new Canon Powershot S70, which I am trying to learn to like. It's a seven-megapixel model, but I have it set to take pictures smaller than that because the full-size ones always seem blurry. So far, I like it for wide-angle landscape shots in good light conditions. And I like that it's small and fits easily into a coat pocket. But it's actually a little too small for my hands, so I'm less comfortable using it that I am with the other two cameras.

Adobe Photoshop is the other key to getting decent pictures. I use it to crop, resize, and sharpen pictures, and to modify their brightness, contrast, and color saturation.

Colorful contrasts to all the white snow

Here are some pictures that will stand in contrast to the nearly monochrome images I posted of yesterday's snow. The day before yesterday, I noticed that our Christmas cactus (schlumbergera) — I might now call in my birthday cactus, and I see that it is also known as an Easter cactus — was in full bloom. It deserved some pictures.



We also have a new orchid — a gift from our friend who is now in the clinic, recuperating from her attack. She bought it for us to thank us for driving her back and forth to the hospital in Blois back in January, when she was having a series of tests done. There's an orchid greenhouse in the town of Contres, just 10 miles north of us.

And here's one more plant, a peace lily that our friends Geri and Phil from SF gave us in 2003. They were the first people to come visit and stay with us after we arrived in France. The peace lily (spathiphyllum wallisii) flowers in late winter and early spring.

Oh, and here's a cyclamen that I bought at a nursery last year. After a summer of dormancy, it came back this winter and has produced a lot of flowers.

To go with today's dinner of venison and Yorkshire pudding, I made a pineapple upside-down cake for dessert. I found a fresh pineapple at the Ed supermarket, and I used a recipe from this blog, which is a great food site. I didn't have brown sugar, so I used French sucre de canne (what I would call raw sugar) instead. The proof of the recipe will be in the eating, which we will put off until after lunch.

I actually ended up with two cakes, because I used a slightly smaller cakepan than the recipe called for. There was plenty of pineapple, plenty of caramel, and plenty of batter to make the two cakes.

The snow is starting to melt. The sun is shining brightly this morning. We're hoping to be able to drive on the little roads out through the vineyards later this morning. There's a good bakery up there that makes bread in wood-fired ovens.

The back yard again, in sunshine

A cushion of snow sitting on top of our bay laurel hedge

A rouge-gorge (European robin) looking for food in the snow