More rain, more gray

It looks like this again today:


What I've said about weather in northern France is completely relative, of course. If you're coming from a more northerly region like England, or a place that has a harshly cold winter like the U.S. Midwest or Northeast, you'll find the weather here fairly mild by your standards. The hours of daylight are very short here in November, December, and January. What daylight there is often lurks behind a low layer of gray clouds, or thick ground fog.

Time for me to go out and walk in the gray with the dog. Making quenelles today, and taking pictures.

Bertie's busy, and me too

This morning I went downstairs to take Bertie his food. We bought a new brand recently and he doesn't seem to like it as much as the old brand. This new food is Whiskas brand, and the other was the supermarket brand, SuperU. Go figure.

Anyway, I went into the garage and saw what I thought was a pile of leaves on the floor. Narrow, pointy leaves, a dozen or more of them, all pulled apart except for one bunch. Does this cat like bay leaves, I wondered. I'm drying some in the garage. I reached down to pick the leaves up and realized they were dark gray feathers! Bertie obviously caught a bird yesterday. He must have eaten it.

Pictures of the vineyard yesterday morning, in the fog —
a study in straight lines

We've been seeing flocks of titbirds — des mésanges — around the house these last few days, and they have feathers like that. We feed the tits by putting out boules de graisse on the balcony railing and bird seed in feeders out front. Maybe that's not doing the tits a favor these days.

The crews are going through the rows of vines taking out
and replacing broken and rotting support posts right now.

According to weather reports, yesterday was going to be dry and sunny, or at least partly sunny. It was nothing of the sort. A thick fog rolled in and stayed all day. We never saw the first ray of sunshine. This is typical northern France weather in late fall and winter. A high pressure moves over us, and it traps fog at ground level. It's thick and gloomy. It was chilly too, though not what you'd call cold. We had a fire in the woodstove in the afternoon.

One vigneron is busy pruning his vines and
burning the clippings in this home-made contraption.

The fog discouraged me from doing any yard work. Everything is still too wet out there. It would take several days of dry sunny weather to take the squish out of the ground, and make the leaves rakeable and burnable.

My first thought when I write a blog post goes to all the people I know who toy with the idea, or at least a dream, of one day buying or renting a house in France and coming to live here. I know quite a few. Consider the weather, I say to everybody, especially if you want to live out in the country, where it's affordable. If you move to Paris or another big city, the weather probably doesn't matter so much. There's plenty to do indoors. But plan on spending a lot of money.

Grapes still hang on some vines.
These are up against a stone wall.

I know British and American expats who live here in the Loire Valley part-time. Part-time means spending the winter elsewhere. Key West. Boston. Los Angeles. Tahiti. The Sahara. Au soleil. French people who have always lived here and don't have the luxury of a winter residence in a sunny clime tell me it is very important to have an occupation, an activity, a hobby to get you through the winter.

If you are retired, such a wintertime occupation is indispensable. As an American, you don't have to right to work in France. You can start your own business if you know how and have a good idea. You can try to find a way to do work from afar for an American employer. You can write a novel. You can renovate your house.

This blog is one of my occupations, of course. Cooking is another. Reading. Watching films on TV (going out to the movies isn't much of an option out here in the country). Gardening, which is a euphemism for a lot of dirty, cold yard work in the wintertime, if you are up to doing it.

Walking with the dog in the vineyard, rain or shine,
is another wintertime occupation.

I just read and enjoyed a 30-year-old book of essays by a man named Noel Perrin, who left New York City to become an amateur farmer in Vermont. It's called First Person Rural. Thanks to Chrissou for bringing it when she visited. I could really identify with much of what Mr. Perrin had to say about life in the country vs. life in the big city.

Today the forecast calls for another band of windy rain to blow in off the ocean. This afternoon, I'll be in the kitchen, working on making something good to eat. Quenelles de volaille, it's called — poultry dumplings. The human equivalent of Bertie's bird, I guess. More about that later.

Mid-November

We finally had a day that was fairly dry here in Saint-Aignan. There was only one short rain shower in the middle of the afternoon. And finally the wind has stopped blowing. Temperatures remain mild. We had a lot of rain, but Normandy, northern France, and Belgium got the worst of it, with flooding. Today it's raining and snowing down in the Alps, and there's rain all the way to the Riviera.

Fortunately, I have no more cat stories to tell right now. Yesterday when I came back from my walk with the dog, the cat came into the room, brazenly, and confronted the dog. It went fairly well, even though Callie tried to bite on of Bertie's back legs off. Bertie hissed and swiped at her with his claws. He missed her nose by a whisker. Maybe she'll learn to accept him one day. Same for the neighbors.

There are still a few leaves left in the vineyard.

There's still a rose here and there in the yard.

The vignerons and their crews are out in the
vineyard, pruning the vines and burning the clippings.
Here you can see the plume of smoke, behind the tree.

The color of the light can be pretty nice, late in the day.

And the pond is very full after the recent rains.

The sun is supposed to shine all day today. Il serait temps — it's about time. Yesterday I went out and cut down two big sad-looking stands of dahlias, pruned back an overgrown rosemary bush, and pulled out the dead flax, marigolds, and zinnias that were growing around the well near the back door.

What a great feeling to accomplish something outdoors, finally, after being incapacitated by a sprained ankle and then kept indoors by the constant rain for two or three weeks.

Il n'est si petit chat...

...qui n'égratigne. That means: "No cat is too small to scratch you." Never underestimate your adversaries, in other words. Not that I have any!

Let me say this about the neighbor whose only solution to the Bertie situation is to take him to the SPA (the French counterpart of our SPCA and RSPCA). She doesn't seem to be anybody's favorite neighbor. She and our other neighbors across the road have been on the outs with each other for years... decades, actually. I wouldn't call it a feud, but an icy silence reigns.

From what I can glean, she is also on the outs with other neighbors too. I surmise as much from her absence when there are neighborhood gatherings and she and her daughter are about the only neighbors not in attendance. A few years ago, some people invited us and them over together for a New Year's cocktail, but they first asked us to assure them that we were all were on speaking terms. That was a clue.

So I do consider the source of the cat-handling advice. And I hope none of them reads this blog!

It's interesting that two other neighbors have told me that one of these neighbors' cats — a beautiful, pure white one, the polar opposite of Bertie in appearance — is also very aggressive. One neighbor says that several times the white cat has come into her house through an open door or window, and she says the cat gets pushy and uncooperative when she tries to shoo it out. Another described the white cat as « effronté » — the dictionary gives "insolent, impudent, cheeky (Brit), sassy (US)" as translations for that term.

As for Bertie's aggressive behavior, I of course have no idea why he mounted a sneak attack on the neighbor woman's legs. I can't know whether she did anything to provoke him. I am really glad that she and her mother witnessed our interaction with Bertie, when we found him up on their roof the other day. I called him and he came to me immediately. He almost jumped into my arms. I handed him off to Walt and their was no struggle or commotion. He was docility incarnate.

I appreciate all the advice and information in the comments. I don't want to keep Bertie confined, especially since he and Callie don't mix happily. Chats et chiens, mauvais voisins, they say. Bertie is too independent to become an indoor cat now. I also don't want to give him up, and I certainly don't want him euthanized. We've become really fond of him. Besides, he hasn't committed any crime, and he doesn't have a terminal illness.

"Day by day..." is my blog tagline. So that's what it will be.

It's time for Bertie to go to the vet's anyway, so I'll take him this week, if I can figure out how. He needs some booster shots and a general checkup. It'll be a good chance to talk to one of the vets about his behavior, cat behavior in general, and our options.

By the way, looking around I found French this blog written by a cat. It's called "in the eye of a cat" — as the cat sees things.