Two local landmarks

When you see the Château de Saint-Aignan from behind, as in the banner photo of it with the town's church as well, you'd never guess that it might look like this on the other side. It's not open to the public, though you can go up to the terrace and have a look around. (You can enlarge the photo by clicking or tapping on it.)

Just a few minutes' drive southeast of Saint-Aignan is the village of Châteauvieux, which is picturesque. It's know for its wines. The château there is occupied by a retirement home.

I reached back nine years to find these photos. We had a rainy day yesterday, and it's not supposed to be much better today. Planting the garden has to be postponed until the ground can dry out again. This happens a lot of years.

Silly me...

...I thought the rain had stopped. I didn't hear raindrops on the roof or the upstairs skylights during the night. But a minute ago, when I opened the sliding doors in the living room to let Bertie the cat in, I saw that rain is still falling. Oh well, I'll go out to the supermarket this morning anyway.

Here are just a couple of photos for a Sunday: above, an iris speckled with raindrops. Below, some wall art in a side chapel in the church at Saint-Aignan that I photographed in 2006.

Looking back through my archives last weekend, when I was finding those shots of Susan and Ray that I posted a few days back, I found a lot of photos from that era that I don't seem to have posted on the blog. We were really busy in 2006, with the dog's passing and visits from a lot of friends through most of the spring and summer.

Row row row your boat

Talk about paying for all that nice sunny weather we had in April! We've now have a normal month's worth of rain since Thursday night. That's just over 50 millimeters, or just over 2 inches. Today and tomorrow, we are supposed to get another inch of rain, or maybe more. I hope the Citroën floats...

The landscape, including the leaves out in the vineyard, is incredibly green now.

A river runs behind it — that's our house. The duck pond out back, which actually has a pair of ducks breeding or at least feeding in it these days, is overflowing as much as I've ever seen it overflow. The tractor path that goes down to the vineyard parcels just north of our house was a fast-flowing stream when I took Callie out for a damp walk yesterday afternoon.

Nice weather for... snails

We were out for a drive from before noon until after 5:00 p.m. yesterday. In one village, we saw a country lane that had been completely flooded by what is normally a babbling brook. Luckily, that wasn't the way we needed to go. In another village, a larger road had a small river running over it. It wasn't deep enough to keep us from passing, but prudence was the order of the hour.

Canes stapled to the wires will support bunches of fat grapes in a couple of months.

Walt's going to try to go to the open-air market in Saint-Aignan this morning, unless the rain really starts coming down hard again. He wants to get some asparagus and some strawberries, if there are any to be had. These local specialty crops are coming in very late this spring.

My impression of our current landscapes and skies.

The good news about the Citroën is that is has a very pleasant ride. I figured out how to use the on-board computer, and over the course of our drive we covered 147 kilometers yesterday. Our average speed was 56 kph. The car consumed 4.7 liters per 100 kilometers — that's how fuel economy is measured in France. In U.S. terms, that's 50.5 miles per gallon (and in British terms,  over 60 mpg). Not bad. And the windshield wipers work just fine.

La fin d'une époque

Another important figure in my life passed away yesterday. She was a singer whose stage name was Patachou, and she was 96 years old. She hadn't been active for quite a while. I haven't had time to prepare anything about her for the blog, but I can say that I probably learned more French (and derived more hours of pleasure) from listening to Patachou's songs than I have learned from only a handful of other important French people in my life.

I'll try to write more about her later, but I certainly do recommend her music to anybody who appreciates the beauty of the French language. You can listen to a well-known example here. Meanwhile...

It pains me to see the old France that I have loved so much, and that has shaped my life for 50 years, continue to disappear. Paris, the vineyards, the architecture, the history, the literature and music remain, but so many of the great practitioners of a certain era in the history the French language are dying off or have retired. Among singers, I think of Georges Brassens, Barbara, Claude Nougarou, Daniel Balavoine, Michel Berger, Alain Bashung, Jean Ferrat, Georges Moustaki, Charles Trenet, Jacques Brel, and of course La Piaf.... all gone.

Others, artists of my generation — Alain Souchon, Laurent Voulzy, Julien Clerc, Francis Cabrel, France Gall, Véronique Sanson — are at the end of their careers. I'm improvising, so I've probably left some important people out. I hope I don't sound melancholy — I'm not. I'm so happy to have had this life I've led, and to be spending the last part of it in France. I hope this isn't yet the time for my swan song!