The garden, and December skies

I decided that we needed to cover the vegetable garden plot this winter, to keep weeds from taking over. It's really hard to till the soil when it's full of tough native plants with tenacious roots. It's also hard for me to realize that the next time I do the tilling out in the garden I'll be 70 years old!

A couple of weeks ago, Walt went to our local Bricomarché DIY/hardware/gardening store and found two tarps that cover most of the garden plot, and we put bricks, concrete blocks, heavy tiles, boards, and rocks all around the edge to keep the tarps from blowing away. So far so good. The tarps didn't budge, despite the windy weather we had last weekend. The plants on the edges of the plot are Swiss chard (on the left) and Tuscan kale (on the right). I harvested some kale leaves last week and we enjoyed them at lunchtime.

Above is the sunset day before yesterday as I was going out for an afternoon walk with the dog. It was nice to see the sun that day. Yesterday, we were completely socked in — the fog was so thick that visibility was really limited.

Above is a view over part of the vineyard, looking away from the sunset and toward our house. The eastern sky is much softer and more peaceful-looking than the western sky on these mid-December afternoons.

Solar-powered shutters and a new garage door for Christmas

I actually took my camera out on the walk with Tasha yesterday afternoon. And this morning I've been going through the photos I took (nearly 75 of them) and "processing" them. The light level is low late in the afternoon these days, as I've said, but the photos came out better than I expected them to. They'll remind you what the environment around Saint-Aignan looks like.

What motivated me was taking photos of our new garage door and the new solar-powered shutters on our back windows. You might already have seen some photos that Walt posted, but here are mine. The one above is the front of our house, which faces east. The old garage door was a dark brown door with four vertical panels that had to be opened by hand. The new one is a sectional, automated door controlled by what we used to call "genies" — remote controls, télécommandes — that we keep in our cars. Here's what the front of the house used to look like.

Above is a photo of the back of the house. The new shutters are volets roulants — roll-down exterior shades made of aluminum slats. They are solar powered. The photovoltaic cells are the black strips on the top left corners of each shutter. The produce electricity that keeps batteries charged, and the batteries provide electricity for the motor that rolls the shades up and down. Each shutter has its own remote control, and Walt has mounted those on the walls of each room next to the windows. You touch a button that sort of look like a light switch and the shutter goes up if it's down or down if it's up. The shutters can be partially closed as well, as you can see. Click this link to see a "before" shot of about the same view (but in a different season).

The back of the house faces west, and our prevailing winds come from the west as well. We are on high ground, and the vineyard produces a kind of wind-tunnel effect when storms roll in. The roll-down shutters are so easy to close compared to the old "finger-pincher" folding shutters that we will be closing them more often, especially on windy days and nights. And we won't even have too open the windows to close the shutters, which means we won't be letting as much heat escape from the house.

Here's another gratuitous photo of the house. It's the squarish one with the dark brown tiles on the roof, just to the right of the two big, dark-colored conifers. You can almost see the shutters from this distance. There are two other houses visible to the right of ours. I took these "soft-focus" photos just after sundown yesterday afternoon.

Of darkness, light, and snow

The sun will rise at 8:30 a.m. and set at 5:04 p.m. today here in Saint-Aignan. These are very short days. I'm tired of darkness at this point. At least it's not yet freezing cold outdoors.

We got a lot of rain on Saturday — more than half an inch (14 mm) — but we did see the sun yesterday (Sunday). And we're supposed to see it again today. That's a relief.

I know, I shouldn't complain. Look at what's happening in North Carolina, my home state in the U.S., right now. At least two people who occasionally comment on this blog must be looking out on more than a foot of snow. And they might get a layer of pure ice from freezing rain before the storm ends.

The weather situation is why I'm enjoying looking back to our time out on the Atlantic coast in October. I'll say again how lucky we were to have a week of blue skies and sunshine. The photos here are ones I took on the Sunday and Monday of our week-long trip.

Pretty soon, I'll start posting some photos of the beaches, rocks, and houses of the Île de Noirmoutier. We went there on Wednesday 10/24 and it was again a beautiful day. You could have mistaken it for a fine summer day if you hadn't looked at a calendar.

More about the Gîtes de Brillac in the Vendée

The sign says Gîte rural de Brillac, in the singular, but the people who own the property now have a second gîte available as well. I didn't really see that one because a French family was staying there while we stayed in the one you see below, which is called La Petite Maison. They are both rented for the same reasonable price (in October, about 400 euros for the week, everything included). You can see more information for both on this Gîtes de France web page. The second gîte is called L'Étable (The Stable).

In the photo above, the building on the left is a separate residence. The stone walls in the middle are the ruins of a building that might have once been a house or a barn. The gîte we stayed in is the house with red shutters, and the owners' house is on the far right. L'Étable is part of that building.

The map (thanks to Google Maps) above shows the area. The Vendée river is literally just steps from the gîtes. Brillac is a hamlet of the village of Chaix, on the upper right. There are no shops or supermarkets in either place. You have to drive into Fontenay-le-Comte for those (a HyperU and a Centre Leclerc, among other grocery stores).

Above is a view of the Vendée river when you turn right at the point just above the little pink marker for the Gîtes de Brillac on the map. Cars drive on this road, but traffic is very light, and as you can see, the speed limit is 30 kph (about 20 mph). The blue sign warns drivers that this is principally a hiking and biking path.

Many little canals flow into the Vendée in this area, but because the land is very low and flat the waters flow very slowly. This canal, not far from where I took the preceding photo, is covered with duckweed (called la lentille d'eau in French, I think — lentils, the little beans, are called lentilles too, as are lenses).

The river looks like this around Brillac. This is not far from where I took the photos I posted yesterday, including the cows. You can see that some people had parked an RV (un camping-car) just at the point where the road become a pedestrian and cycling path only. They were out fishing on the riverbank.