Overwhelmed...

I don't have a lot more to say about it because I haven't got any real information, but I did go back and check on the incarcerated crow yesterday afternoon (see yesterday's post). I found only one bird in the cage. At least only one live bird. I also saw what appeared to be a bird carcass, an egg, and some dog kibble in a separate compartment of the cage.

I also noticed that the imprisoned crow has food and water in his compartment, so he is being well looked after. There are compartments in the cage structure that are open such that an animal or bird could go in. I don't know if the doors would be triggered to fall shut at that point, but I suppose they would. I really wish I had seen somebody out there that I could ask about the whole business. Maybe I will this morning.

Meanwhile, our fine weather has returned and is predicted to last all week. There are trees in flower and wildflowers on the ground everywhere. The grapevines are starting to put out leaves, as are many of the trees all around us. And I'm suffering miserably with a very sore throat, which might be some kind of allergic and sinus thing, or might be a bug.

I'm taking so many photos that I don't know what to do with them all. I guess I'll just post a few below, and complain about my pollen allergies.

Allergies are all the news in France right now. Pollen levels are extremely high (especially birch pollen, they say) and, according to this morning's news reports, one-third of French adults suffer from pollen allergies, along with one-fifth of all children.

Pollution is said to be a contributing factor, and the number of people with pollen allergies is on the rise — it won't be too many more years, at this rate, before fully half of all adults in France will be allergic to pollen, and the season for pollen allergies just keeps getting longer.

My own pollen allergies started suddenly. It was April 1, 1992, and Walt and I had just moved from San Francisco down to Sunnyvale in the Santa Clara Valley (that's Silicon Valley) in California. For 10 years starting that day, I was miserable from about the end of January to the first of June every year. Sneezing, burning eyes, a runny nose, fatigue — it was debilitating. I had to give up springtime gardening entirely, and I took a lot of sick days off from work.

Moving to France was good for me, and I've had allergy attacks here infrequently. It's been 12 years already. This spring I'm getting nervous about what's happening. Maybe I need to move to the North Pole, where there are no cypress trees or Scotch broom (a.k.a. "common broom"). Broom (or genêt à balais) has aggressively invaded this area over the past 12 years, and I'm sure it's one of the main offenders in my case.

Black and blue

Yesterday morning on my walk I went to check on the cage I had noticed out in the vineyard a couple of days earlier. Callie, too, was also curious to go and have a nose around in that area.

Well, I found a crow — a raven, really — un corbeau — trapped in the cage. There was nothing I could do about it but take a couple of photos. The poor bird went a little wild flapping its wings and jumping from a perch to another and onto the ground when Callie got too close. I won't make any jokes about "Nevermore!"

But Callie didn't bark or seem too excited about the whole situation. She sniffed around for a minute or two, and then we continued on our way. When I called her, she followed me immediately. Anyway, why would anyone want to trap a raven? A pheasant, maybe. But a raven? Could he be bait?

Very close by, I saw the first wild orchid of the season. I have the impression they are late blooming this year

P.S. I just did some reading and learned that ravens and crows are considered pests, along with pigeons and magpies. They are trapped and killed. The bodies spread in fields deter other ravens and crows that might want to come and feed on crops planted by farmers. It's pretty awful.

Fog, and a web

A few days ago we had a nice foggy morning. It was nice because the fog didn't last too long. It lifted by about 10 a.m. and the day turned out to be warm and sunny.

The photos just above and just below show our back yard, where Callie will enjoy spending a lot of her time over the next four or five months (if the weather stays dry).

Below, a line of poplars cuts into the sky behind a vineyard plot just outside our back gate.

When it's foggy and the moisture condenses on spiders' webs, we can see just how many there are in and around the vineyard, and how elaborate some of them are.

It rained overnight, but I'm not sure how much. Now it's supposed to be dry for about another week. There's plenty of work left to be done out in the yard and garden. I often write about the vegetable garden this time of year because gardening is a major part of the Loire Valley lifestyle. Everybody seems to have one. This is, after all, le jardin de la France.

The Citroën car, springtime allergies, and the Canon camera

Today we'll be driving the Citroën C4, which I bought in February, over to Tours to do some shopping on the north side of the city, where there are lot of big-box stores. We want to go to an Auchan store (think Wal-Mart) to see if we can find some bagels and to pick up some other, less-exotic supplies.

In addition, we'll stop at a Picard frozen-foods shop to have a look around (there are no Picard stores close to Saint-Aignan), and then we'll do some serious shopping at the Paris Store Asian supermarket near Auchan. We want to get some frozen shrimp, a few jars of peanut butter, and some bottles of soy and fish sauces. We also have Japanese panko breadcrumbs on our list, for ourselves and for a friend.

Yesterday the weather forecast said that today would be rainy, but that forecast seems to have changed overnight. Now they say we shouldn't get any rain until evening, so ours will be a dry drive. One point of going to Tours — a round-trip of nearly 100 miles — is to drive the Citroën on the autoroute for the first time, just to see what that's like.

The speed limit on a French autoroute, the equivalent of an American interstate highway, is 81 mph (130 kph). On other highways, the limit is 55 mph (90 kph) most places, with just a few places, at least around here, where you might see a speed limit of 66 mph (110 kph) on a stretch of four-lane road. My goal is drive the C4 at 80 mph for an hour or so as a test of its performance and our comfort at that high speed.

I'm having a lot of sinus trouble right now. I had low-grade allergy symptoms in March when I was in North Carolina for two weeks, and that didn't surprise me. I'm especially allergic to cypress-tree pollen, and there are extensive stands of of cypress trees along the Carolina coast, as there are in California, where we used to live. It was normal for me to have springtime allergy symptoms in the U.S.

Here in the Saint-Aignan area and the Loire Valley, there aren't so many cypress trees, but when the wind blows from the south it brings a lot of pollen with it. Right now a low-pressure area bringing clouds, gusty winds, and some rain is moving up from Spain and the Pyrenees. I'm really feeling the effects of it. I can't wait for our weather to change again.

I think doing the tilling I did in what will be our 2015 vegetable garden aggravated the allergies. I must have stirred up and breathed in a lot of pollen by running the rototiller. The three or four tilling sessions I managed to finish out there really did me in. Yesterday I took a day off from garden work, but I'm not sure it helped. I feel just as miserable this morning as I did yesterday morning.

Meanwhile, I'm still experimenting with my new Canon SX700 digital camera. While the weather was sunny and warm, I took a lot of photos of springtime scenes when I went out for walks with the dog. Some of those photos are posted here. As always, you can click or tap on the images to see them at a larger size.