Damn damp

I give you another shot of the deeply red tomatoes on display at the market in Valençay a couple of days ago, because this may be as close as we get to a tomato crop this summer. Unless the weather improves, that is.

Early-season tomatoes at the market in Valençay

We are having another damp, drizzly day. Now I can't really complain — it would be unseemly — considering the horrible storms and flooding people down in the southern part of France have lived through this week. There was considerable damage, and 20 or more people died. The system that caused those storms moved north, but by the time it got to us it produced just gray skies, chilly breezes, and drizzle.

The Loire Valley doesn't often get tropical downpours and cloudbursts. The climate here is temperate. But you know what temperate means: it means it is very seldom really hot, and only nice and warm all too infrequently, and for very short periods. Okay, there are exceptions to that rule, but so far the 2010 season doesn't seem to be one.

What with our damp, gray weather, it's not surprising that
nobody was sitting at the outdoor tables on the sidewalk
in front of the Lion d'Or in Valençay.

Yesterday afternoon was positively gloomy. This morning too. I guess it's good weather for finishing a new floor.

The market hall in Valençay looked a little triste,
but that's because it was closing time.

Bricomarché didn't fail to entertain yesterday morning. When we got there, we could find only a single tin of the vitrificateur, the polyurethane varnish, that we wanted. We went to seek assistance at the customer service desk, and were told that the product we needed was a promotion, and that the store probably wouldn't have more than a can or two of it. We needed much more than that, of course.

They said we could buy the regular, not-on-sale product if we liked. That was 2.5 liters for 47 euros. Not quite twice the price. What a deal! We were thinking: "Bait and Switch."

We ended up finding three 3-liter tins, at about 30 euros each. Again, that wouldn't do it. Walt kept searching, and just as we were about to give up he spotted some 6-liter cans of the varnish up on a very high shelf in the paint section of the store. The 6-liter cans had not been included in the stores sale flyer.

Yes, it was the exact same varnish. And what was the price? It turned out to be 55 euros for the 6 liters. That was even less expensive than the 3-liter tins that were an advertised special. We were in luck. The store employees, Johnny and Florence by name, seemed to be unaware of its existence.

You always have to be resourceful — débrouillard — in French retail stores. Often the large economy size of a given product ends up costing more per liter or kilo than the regular size. You're better off buying two smaller cans, jars, or packages than one large one. And often the sale items are in one section of the store, while in the regular aisles the exact same product is still for sale at the higher price. How many times has that happened to me? « Mais monsieur, il faut regarder dans le rayon des promotions si vous voulez le prix annoncé dans la publicité ! » Why would they have the same product at different prices in different sections of the store. Va comprendre...

Part of the haul. The four tins cost about 225 euros.

And how many 6-liter tins did Bricomarché have on the shelf? Four! « Ouaou ! », as they say — that means and sounds like Wow! We were in business. We bought all four. Four 6-liter tins is the equivalent of 6 U.S. gallons of product. We can put down three or even four coats of it at that rate, according to the instructions on the tins.

That's a good thing, because we painted a spare floorboard with some yesterday afternoon to see what it looked like. It did not appear yellow to my eye. And the wood fairly quickly and completely soaked up that first coat. I guess that's a good thing too. At least it won't peel off.

Vitrify? Varnish? Oil? What ‘wood’ you do?

The work in our new upstairs "apartment" — to use an A-word that's not "attic" — really is finished now. All that's left to do is pay for it all. Well, and paint. We received what they call « la douloureuse » a few days ago. That's the "painful thing" — the bill to pay.

The last little touches were finished Monday and yesterday. On Tuesday we were out all day having fun, so no work was done. Now all the baseboards are as good as they are going to get — except for painting. The other moldings, doors, walls and so on are in place and trimmed to satisfy our requirements. And the metal railing on the lower stairway has been soldered and screwed back into place, so there's no risk of anybody accidentally falling off the landing.

This is the product I at first thought we should buy and use.
Doing so would have meant a drive over to Tours. It's a
water-based, acrylic varnish. I bet it's expensive.

Now comes the hard part for us — the varnishing and painting. Today, we hope to be able to buy the varnish or sealer that we'll finish the floor and stairs with. After much research, reflection, and discussion, we've decided to go with the products available from a local supplier. Another option was to drive the hour or so over to Tours and buy floor finishing products in a specialty shop there.

We've decided not to go down that path. Even though the products might be of higher quality, they are surely much more expensive. And there's that trip there and back, which can take up a good portion of a day. If we ended up having to return to the shop several times over the course of the job, we'd be wasting a lot of time in, and fuel for, the car.

These seemed pretty pricey to me. I decided to pass.

The local supplier I'm talking about is a hardware/home-improvement shop called Bricomarché, a national chain. The verb « bricoler » and noun « bricolage » describe what "do-it-yourself-ers" get involved in. And Bricomarché is one of the French retail chains that sells the tools and products the DIYers have need of.

Here's another varnish, especially for stairs.
The instructions on the page are interesting.

And they are having a sale! When I first did some research on the web for varnishes for wooden floors and staircases, I found a Bricomarché catalog that listed two grades of varnish —
« Passages Extrêmes» and « Hautes Performances » — of the 3V3 brand. Both products are in the « vitrificateur » category. You apply them to "vitrify," or seal, wood floors and stairs. In other words, they contain polyurethane.

The problem with the 3V3 products was the cost. They sell, respectively, for 106 € and 157 € a bucket, which contains 2.5 liters. We'll need at least four is not six cans of one or the other, bringing the cost to between 500 and 1,000 €. Ouf !

And here's the one we are aiming for now. What a deal!
It's 10 euros per liter, water-based, quick-drying, and
highly resistant to scratches and abrasion.

Then in Monday's mail we got a new publicité flyer from Bricomarché. In it I saw a water-based vitrificateur product for sale at about 30 € a tin. And the tin holds 3 liters, not just 2.5 l. Again, even if we need 6 tins (18 liters, which is nearly 5 U.S. gallons), it will set us back only about 200 €. That's better. And if we need more of it, to apply an extra coat, we can just pop over to Bricomarché, which is about 5 miles from the house, to pick some up. The sale price is good until July 4.

All this is assuming that Bricomarché will actually have the product in stock. More about that later.

Recent encounters of the blogger kind

Yesterday we drove the 10 miles or so over to a village near Valençay to meet some people who contacted us through our blogs and invited us for lunch. This happens several times a year, and we invariably have a good time meeting people who are interested in France and the Loire Valley, good food and drink, and meeting others like themselves.

L. and J. are a couple who live in Arizona and have traveled a lot in France and the rest of Europe over the years. They are originally from New York City. Over the years, they've rented apartments in Paris, stayed in rental houses in Brittany and eaten tons of fresh oysters, and visited a lot of the châteaux here in our region. This is the second time they have rented the gîte near Valençay, because they enjoyed it so much the first time. They are staying here for a month with their 11-year-old twin daughters.

Driving over to Valençay yesterday, we pulled off the road
to admire and photograph a huge field of red poppies.

L. made a really nice lunch — lasagna according to Mario Batali's recipe, a salad of fresh vegetables, and some sweet local strawberries plus an apricot tart for dessert. Callie had a lot of fun playing with L. and J.'s daughters. We met the British owners of the rental house, who live in a separate house on the property.

Actually, at about 7:30, the owners brought over a supper of salmon and avocado amuse-bouche, a lacquered duck, and a delicious rice stir-fry. We ended up spending not only the afternoon, but the whole evening. We didn't get back to Saint-Aignan until nearly 11 p.m. We spent all that time sitting out in the garden, and we were lucky because it didn't rain at all and it was pleasantly warm out.

This is one of the largest fields of poppies I've ever seen.

It's about 5 miles east of Saint-Aignan, near Lye.

Last weekend, we had visitors who found us through the blog too. These were a couple I had worked with long ago — 1973, to be exact — when we were all graduate students in the French Department at the University of Illinois in Urbana. They are spending a month in Paris with their 22-year-old son, and they drove down to Saint-Aignan for the weekend to see us.

I lost touch with S. and D. back in the '70s when they moved away from Urbana and I took off for a few years in France as an English teacher. They now live in Illinois again, and he is the chairman of the foreign languages department at a large state university there. D. had a whole career as a nurse after leaving the teaching profession years ago.

To continue the red theme, look at these tomatoes on display
in the market at Valençay. They were so appetizing
that we had to buy a couple of them.

We invited S. and D. over for an apéritif under our « barnum » — the new big-top lawn tent — out in the back yard. Then I went out to dinner with them at the restaurant in Saint-Aignan called Chez Constant. Walt begged off because he was still recovering from the nasty cold he had last week, and was still coughing quite a bit.

He probably was right to stay home instead of going to the restaurant with us. S., D., and I were talking about old times, back before I met Walt in 1981. We had a lot of mutual friends to catch each other up on, and a lot of stories to tell each other about how our lives turned out the way they did, all that we did along the way, and how we got to where we are now. It was a lot of fun.

If I didn't do this blog, we probably would never have found each other again.

What's growing?

It still feels like summer is having a hard time getting off the ground this year, and we still have plants in seedling pots waiting to be set out in the vegetable garden. Recently it's been too rainy and cool for us to do anything.

As usual, we have a lot of extra tomato plants — 20 are already in the ground, and we've given at least a dozen to friends and neighbors — but we have room so we are going to plant some more. We also have 8 or 10 little cayenne and other hot red pepper plants that need setting out. Unless the weather warms up soon, they aren't going to do much.

Radishes growing in the vegetable garden. The greens
are good to eat, as well as the roots.

What is growing right now? Well, the sweet corn has come up. Walt put in 24 plants, I think. Radishes are thriving, and while we aren't eating the radishes yet, we are enjoying the greens in salads and pesto as we thin the rows of plants.

Potato plants, with the vineyard in the background.
It's about time to start digging spuds.

The potatoes are amazing — at least they look amazing above ground. The plants are tall and very green, with some flowers that we keep pinching off so that the plants' energy will go into the roots. Pretty soon I'm going to dig some potatoes to see if they are ready. They've been growing for more than 60 days now, which is enough for the precocious variety.

Sour cherries — cerises acides — are good for making pies and jam.

There are a lot of cherries all around, at different stages of ripeness. The most spectacular tree is just outside our property. I've had my eye on it. A couple of days ago, somebody came and picked a lot of the cherries, fairly stripping the low-hanging branches of fruit. I hope it was the people who own the land the tree is on who got the benefit of the fruit.... since I didn't!

The neighbors' groseillers are loaded down with red currants.

The neighbors across the street have huge crops of red currants — groseilles in French — and raspberries — framboises. They don't seem to be picking them, and soon the birds will find and devour the berries. I need to ask the neighbors if we can go a pick some, especially the grosesilles — they make good jelly and good tarts.

Black currants are called cassis in French. They make good jelly
and pies too, when you have enough of them, as we did last year.

We have one black currant bush— a cassissier, which produces cassis berries— in our yard, and there's fruit on it but not enough to do much with. Last year we had plenty — well, enough to make one jar of jam. I'm not sure what we will get this summer.