That blue moon

We had a blue moon on July 31. I didn't take a picture of it, though, until Sunday, August 2, when it was just past the full stage. It really did look blue.

The expression "blue moon" is used to describe the second full moon that occurs in the same calendar month, or the fourth full moon occurring in a calendar quarter (trimestre), which usually has just three full moons (one per month).

This year, the moon was full on July 1 and on July 31. The next blue moons — two of them — will occur in 2018. By yesterday morning, you could clearly see that the moon had started waning.

By the way, we finished the cleaning of the garage. I took two carloads of stuff to the recycling center, and now the car is full again with stuff that I plan to take this week to the charity shop called Emmaüs over in Romorantin.

It's too bad I didn't take any "before" pictures. Cleaning out the garage is obviously something we do only once in a blue moon. Take my word for it — the garage is a lot emptier and cleaner now than it was last week.

Le grand ménage — spring cleaning in August

Well, we did it. Just because you live in a beautiful part of France doesn't mean you don't have to take care of the mundane tasks in life. I'm talking about cleaning out the garage. It's a space that inevitably fills up with stuff over the years.

The weather is hot but dry. They're saying that this afternoon will be blazing hot here in the Loire Valley. We'll get what we can get done during the cooler morning hours. Over the weekend, we dragged out the things we want to keep and put them under the old carport out front, where they'd be protected in the event of a rain shower.

When we moved into this house 12 years ago, the garage was already full of junk. That first summer, we emptied it out and took a carloads of stuff to the recycling center — la déchetterie — across the river in Noyers. But we also decided to hold on to a lot of things because we weren't sure what we might need or want out of all the junk.

We emptied the garage another time since then — we can't remember exactly when. But it was time to do it again. I already took a carload of stuff to the déchetterie on Saturday, and yesterday I filled up the car again for another run over there today. A lot of the stuff we're throwing out is old cardboard boxes and plastic bags.

A lot of other stuff will go to the French equivalent of the Good Will store, which is called Emmaüs [ay-mah-YUCE]. There's a store — it's a complex of stores, really — over in the town of Romorantin, 20 so miles east of Saint-Aignan. Old light fixtures, a brand-new never-used left-handed guitar, three or four jackets and raincoats, a big old suitcase, a computer and a couple of old monitors, a step ladder, and on and on — it's stuff that has to go but that might be useful to somebody else.

So there you have it. That's how we spent our weekend (or at least the mornings). At first, Bertie watched suspiciously as we emptied out "his" house. Then yesterday he slept peacefully in the garage as we worked. He'll be reassured when he sees us start moving stuff back in today.

The birthday party + scenes from a walk

The neighbor's birthday party Friday night was a big success. We saw and talked with several of our neighbors M and B's daughters and sons-in-law — people we've known for 12 years but not really very well. They live north of us, around Blois, and they all have fairly big families.

One couple (the oldest daughter and her husband) is in line to inherit the neighbors' house when the older couple passes on. I asked them if they intended to come live here one day, and they said no. They'll keep the house as a summer place but live in Blois the rest of the year. People seem surprised that we live out here year-round.

At the party there was a lot of food and drink, of course, prepared or bought apparently by three daughters. We nibbled on pizza, a couple of salads (including fresh tomatoes), local goat cheeses, melon with ham, and desserts. We all sang Joyeux anniversaire a couple of times over the course of the evening.

There must have been 30 or 40 people at the party, ranging in age from one to 85 and spanning four generations. It was an outdoor event. Late in the evening, as the older folks started heading home, seven or eight of the neighbors' grandchildren played music using a smartphone and a little Bluetooth speaker.

They made it into a game. We all sat in a circle around a table — including the neighbor who was celebrating her 80th birthday, Walt, me, and some of the kids' parents, between Walt's age and mine — and each of us took turns naming a favorite song.

Mostly they were French songs, but there were also some English-language tunes. The birthday lady said she enjoyed listening to Johnny Hallyday and Serge Lama! As we all named songs, when the kids — they are are in their late teens to mid-20s, I think — especially liked a song, they sang along and laughed a lot. It was fun and not too boisterous.

I didn't take my camera to the party, so I have no pictures. I wanted just to be there and focus on interacting with people, not be busy taking pictures. So the photos here are from yesterday morning's walk with Callie.

Pommes pommes pommes

I hope we get as many tomatoes from our garden this year as we are going to get apples from the trees in our yard. The apple trees are sagging under the weight of them, and they appear to be ripening quickly.

I don't think this tree has ever had so many apples on it in the 12 years we've lived here.

There are three different kinds of apple trees between our house and the vegetable garden out in yard. The lopsided tree on the right is the one we think might not be long for this world. The other two are doing fine, and all three are proving to be very productive in 2015.

Besides the ones in our yard, there must be a dozen or more other apple trees around the hamlet (9 houses). I guess we all ought to keep donkeys or horses — they'd have plenty to eat. We are going to be buried in apples in a month or two.