Balloon barking and storm eyes

Yesterday morning at about 7:30, Callie went wild barking. She normally stays upstairs in the loft until we go on our walk around 8:00 and sometimes she'll bark if she sees a bird in the trees just beyond the skylight windows. This was a different bark, however — it was wilder, louder, and longer-lasting. It was a hot-air balloon going over. She can hear them long before we do. I snapped a photo.

Hurricane news: The eye of the storm crossed over the coastline just east of Morehead City a few minutes ago. I've been watching it on the local NWS radar site. There was a tornado warning for the area from about 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. yesterday. I haven't see any news of tornadoes or exceptionally strong winds, so I assume all is well. When the eye of the storm to the north and east of the area, the wind shifts direction, blowing from the north. A lot of water can be pushed up toward the southern end of the shallow but expansive Pamlico sound and there is a risk of flooding in Morehead from the north side (it's on a peninsula). I'll find out more later.

It's not easy to read the town names on this map, but along the coast from southwest to northeast, you have Myrtle Beach, Wilmington, Jacksonville, Morehead City, and Cape Hatteras.

It seems that this is the earliest hurricane to affect the North Carolina coast since record-keeping began in 1851. The earliest previous hurricane hit on July 10 in 1901. Today's storm came ashore with 100 mph winds (160 kph). The big dangers for the N.C. coasts are tornadoes, flooding, and significant erosion of the Outer Banks islands. The road that runs along the strip of sandy banks often washes out in such storms. Here's a link to an article in the Raleigh News & Observer.

Our friends Jill and Peter arrived from California yesterday afternoon. The weather was hot (by Saint-Aignan standards) and we were able to sit out on the terrace until late into the evening. Walt grilled some chicken breasts on the barbecue and we had salade macédoine (mixed vegetables in a mayonnaise sauce — thanks, Martine) and taboulé (bulgur with diced cucumber, tomato, parsley, and mint with a lemon juice dressing) alongside. Then we tasted a couple of Auvergne cheeses (Cantal and Bleu d'Auvergne) before we plunged into a box of See's chocolates that J & P brought with them.

It was a pleasant evening, to say the least. This morning it's raining and I've seen lightning off in the distance. It's supposed to be stormy all day. We have reservations for lunch in Bourges at noon. Damn the rain.

Serenity

Isn't that what we all want? Peace and quiet? Maybe it's just my age. Earlier in life, I wanted hustle and bustle, excitement, and surprises. Paris and San Francisco. Now I can do without all that (though I still enjoy the occasional visit to Paris).

I keep re-assessing life. It's strange to be 65 years old and to be living in a vineyard in France. Nobody would ever have predicted this turn of events — though "the turn" happened 11 years ago. Now it seems real and permanent. Some days I feel a certain amount of restlessness, and then I realize how lucky I am, or we are, to be living here and still enjoying life day by day, calmly.

Yesterday's view of the vineyard from our house near Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher in the Loire Valley

I'm off to the hustle and bustle of Blois this morning for a medical appointment. Who would ever have thought my life would be centered on the old town called Blois? Paris, maybe, or Rouen... a big city. [BLWAH] is not a major city. Then tomorrow we'll be going over to Bourges for lunch and a stroll, weather permitting, about the old town, including a few minutes in and around the magnificent cathedral there. Lunch in Bourges... how unlikely.

Today's storm is moving north-northeast along the southeast U.S. coast, aimed at Morehead City.

Ten million people live in North Carolina, and about five million in South Carolina.

Maybe I'm thinking about serenity because today and tomorrow a hurricane is bearing down on my home town in America, which is Morehead City in North Carolina. It doesn't look like an especially destructive storm, but you can never be sure. Now I've got to get busy.

The plum pay-off

Our neighbors across the street, the ones who mainly live in Blois but spend weekends and summers down here in the country near Saint-Aignan, have always been generous about sharing their fruit harvest with us. One year they told us to go pick peaches on their property, and we came home with more than 20 lbs. of them. Another year it was quinces. Each time we made jam (or jelly).

And then there are the plums. They have several kinds, but the ones I like the best for making tarts, clafoutis, or jam are the little red ones. They ripen early — in July, not late August or in September — so they don't get lost in the fruit shuffle at the end of summer. I liked these little red plums so much that a few years ago I planted some pits saved from them and grew my own plum tree.

The shinier plums in the foreground came off the tree in our yard. These little plums are about the size of large cherries.
Plums, by the way, are prunes in French, and prunes are pruneaux.

The new tree turned out to be very different from the neighbors', but this year it is bearing similar fruit. I think its plums are a little more sour. They turn red a lot earlier than the originals. The tree is prettier, because its leaves are red, not green like the parent plant's. All in all, I'm happy with it. And I'm even happier when, as was the case yesterday, I can go over to the neighbors' and pick (gather, mostly, the ones on the ground) a quart or two of the sweet little plums in their yard as well as a few from ours.

Now the question is: a tart, a clafoutis, or jam? Probably not jam right now, because we have company coming and we're going to be busy. A clafoutis, I think. We'll see. Meanwhile, there are a lot more plums on the tree in our yard and they'll need to be picked, because we are expecting rain over the next few days. That might be today's work. Confiture next week — that's a distinct possibility.

Life revolves around...

...grapes. Here in Saint-Aignan, it does, anyway. We eat grapes and grape leaves. We drink wines made from the grapes, and we cook with wine nearly every day. We use wine vinegar in our salad dressings. And every day we go walking among the grapes and vines with the dog.

We also take pictures of vines and grapes. On that subject, I was surprised yesterday to find bunches of grapes this big out in the Renaudière vineyard. I was walking down a row I usually don't walk through. Until yesterday, in other places around the vineyard, I had seen only minuscule grapes in tiny bunches.

These grapes are, unless I'm mistaken, red wine grapes — or they will be in a couple of months. They are still aren't full grown or even close to ripe, but then it's only July 1.