Speaking of green

Here's one of the reasons why I think my monitor might be showing me things through green-colored glasses. But no, it really is very green here. Thanks to all the rain we had in April and May (and the 12 months preceding...).

The Renaudière vineyard at 7:30 a.m. on 25 June 2008
Picture not retouched in Photoshop

Most of the vines have been clipped now to allow the maximum
amount of sunlight to shine on the grapes and keep them warm.

Everything is growing nicely, including blackberry brambles. Yesterday, I went out and cut some thorny vines that are growing over our back fence. You have to keep them under control or they will take over.

The road out in the vineyard where we walk with Callie

Callie the border collie coming when called

We are having beautiful weather right now, but I see on TV that some clouds and rain are going to cover most of Normandy this afternoon. We are right on the edge of the bad weather, so we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed. As soon as the sun goes behind a cloud, you can feel a slight chill in the air.

More orchids? Purple. Picture taken yesterday...

By the way, I noticed that the pink flowers in this picture I posted yesterday look more purple than pink our our laptop display. On my monitor and Walt's they look pink, as they did "in person." Do they look pink or purple to you?

Days of color and warmth

A butterfly on the window in the sunporch

I think I finally have the monitor adjusted. It was a process of trial and error that took me many hours yesterday and the day before. I had to change the settings of the monitor itself so that it displayed minimal color, high brightness, and medium contrast. Then I used the settings in the video driver of my computer's graphics card to overlay color, brightness, and contrast settings that produced the desired result.

Yellow flowers on the edge of the vineyard

A juvenile jackdaw that I saw in Vendôme the other day.
Jackdaws are Eurasian and are the smallest of the crows.

With two sets of adjustments to juggle with, it was complicated. But using only the monitor's or only the computer's settings wasn't working. They had to be balanced against each other. Now I have a widescreen monitor that runs in 1440 x 900 resolution and gives me a larger on-screen workspace. The monitor itself cost less than $300 (€200 or so, and that may explain why it was so hard to adjust). I actually bought it to use it as a television set, but then decided I needed it more as a computer monitor.

The cactus CHM brought me from America is flowering

Little pink flowers on the edge of the vineyard

The weather yesterday was just beautiful. I took two walks with the dog and took a lot of pictures. I did a little bit of cleanup work in the garden (there is always a lot of work to be done out there). We got our vegetable garden in very late this year because we were so busy in April, May, and June, but if the weather continues like this we should get good results.

Sitting in the back yard on a warm sunny day

Another shot of the cactus flower

In this post I'm including some photos, partly for the colors again, but also because they give you an idea of what the weather and the vegetation around here is like right now. There are little flowers everywhere. The flowers that are looking the saddest right now are the roses, which peaked last week. Roses grow in peoples yards and gardens, not out in the vineyard, by the way.

More pix, just experimenting

Here are some pictures from my most recent trip to Paris. I'm still trying to see if they look okay. If they don't look okay on your monitor, let me know.

Lunch at the Café Louis-Philippe — bœuf bourguignon

Lunch at the Café Louis-Philippe — blanquette de veau

An old sign inside the Café Louis-Philippe

A red 2CV parked on a street behind the Hôtel de Ville in Paris

Color adjustments

I got a new monitor and I'm having a really hard time adjusting it to get the colors I'm used to. I'm not sure now what color my pictures are. I'm posting these to see what they look like on this monitor and on the two others we have in the house. Do they look right to you?

Yellow flowers

A pale pink rose

A white daisy with a yellow center