Canicule ?

This is a set of macro photos that I took out in the vineyard a few days ago with my Canon SX700 HS camera. I've had it for more than two years now but I've hardly used it at all. Now I'm enjoying the photos it takes, including macro and long-zoom shots.

The weather we're having is exceptionally warm for the month of June. It's reminding me more and more of June 2003, when we first came to live here. We spent the first week in June up in Normandy, and it was even hot up there. I remember sitting in an outdoor café on the oceanfront in Etretat, on the Channel, in shorts and a T-shirt and not being cold. It was amazing.

That summer produced the Grande Canicule — the great heat wave — that lasted into August in France. In June and July, we were driving a rented Opel that had no air-conditioning. The house didn't have AC either — it still doesn't. We normally don't need AC. We haven't had another summer like 2003 since then.

I bought our little Peugeot 206 that summer, and drove it off the dealer's lot in early August. We still have it. For several weeks that August we would go for long afternoon drives with the dog just to run the AC and get some relief. Luckily, our dog Collette loved to go riding in the car.

The stone and brick houses around Saint-Aignan developed cracks in their walls because of the intense heat. Converted attic spaces — even whole houses, including ours — were like ovens. All over France, thousands — especially older people — died from heat exhaustion and dehydration. For weeks the high temperatures stayed near 40ºC, which is over 100ºF. Let's hope this summer won't be a repeat of that disaster.

Another pretty morning

Not so much today, because it's overcast. That means too that it is weirdly warm. We heard distant thunder overnight, but it stayed away and it's dry here this morning. Nothing is stirring. Meanwhile, here's the view from the back gate that my title refers to.

The pretty morning — spectacular really — was a few days ago (Sunday). I had gotten up at 5:00 and was out walking with Callie the collie by 7:15. I'm glad I got out early, because both the sky and the light were beautiful. By the way, Callie is 10 years old now.

Off in the distance, to the northwest, I spotted a couple of hot-air balloons. They were probably over the château de Chenonceau, which is about 15 miles from here. With my long zoom lens, I was able to get the photo below.

We seem to be having our summer right now. If this kind of weather continues without too many interruptions — rain delays, you might say — it will be amazing. Of course, we had pretty nice weather last year in July, August, and September. Maybe it's a pattern.

Yesterday Natasha, our tiny sheltie puppy, actually managed to walk down half a dozen steps on the steep wooden staircase that goes up to the loft. 'Tasha is 4 months old now.

What happened is that she started up the stairs, and then half way up she changed her mind. Without taking time to think about what she was doing and get scared, she turned around and walked back down. That was a first.

Saint-Aignan in the summer of 2003

June 13, 2003. I found a batch of photos I took on that day, which was our second day in the house where we've lived ever since. Then I thought to look through this blog and I found that I've posted about that day, with photos, several times in the past. We had arrived in France that June, and we had the bought the house, but we were waiting for our container load of furniture and other belongings to arrive. We didn't have even an estimated arrival date from the moving company. Here's a post from 2010 about that time.

Meanwhile, I also found a batch of photos I took a little later in 2003 down in Saint-Aignan. I want to post a few of them, because I think I have never put them on the blog before. We had never  heard of Saint-Aignan, we thought, when we came here in December 2002 to see if we could find a house to buy — or at least to see houses and see if there was anything we could afford or think we'd be happy living in. A real estate agent in Montrichard recommended Saint-Aignan to us. Years later, we realized we had driven through Saint-Aignan on a road trip we took all around France in 1989.

We drove over here from Amboise on a Tuesday morning in December 2003, and this is what we saw. Of course, that was in December, so the town didn't look exactly like what you see in these photos from six months later. In winter, Saint-Aignan can be damp, dark, and kind of gloomy, but we had enough experience of France to know it was the kind of town where we'd be happy to live to live someday.

We had no firm plan about leaving the U.S. at that point. We were just exploring. It was almost a lark, and certainly an adventure. We were lucky to find a cooperative and helpful real estate man, who seemed to understand what kind of house we were interested in. On that December day, we first saw the house we live in now. On paper, we would have rejected it as being too small.

Out of 15 or so houses around the area that we inspected, the one we've ended up living in ever since was the only one that really seemed to have potential, as well as being located in a desirable area: at the end of a dead end road, on the edge of a vineyard, with a big flat yard (not on a hillside), a hedge that gave good privacy, and only 2 or 3 miles from a good-sized town with shops, supermarkets, and services.

That summer of 2003 was quite an experience for two guys who had spent many years in San Francisco, where summer weather is windy, cold, and foggy. (Mark Twain said something like the coldest winter he had ever lived through was a month of August in San Francisco.) We had arrived in France in the year of the Canicule — "dog days", the great heat wave during which thousands of French people died exposure and dehydration — and we endured weeks and weeks of extreme heat. That summer, we were camping in our basically empty house, which of course had no air-conditioning (and still doesn't).

We went out and bought some vinyl outdoor furniture to use as a dining room set while we were waiting for our container to arrive from California by boat. We figured we'd use the outdoor furniture, well... outdoors, after we had real furniture in the house.

And we slept for weeks on the floor, on air mattresses that we bought at the local supermarket, covered in sheets that we borrowed from friends in Normandy. It was so hot that that summer that we feared we might have made a big mistake by buying a house in the Loire Valley. Here are some photos of the San Francisco house we had been living in but had sold.

Church photos...

I realized this morning that I took a lot of photos featuring the church in Saint-Aignan when I was in town Saturday morning. I'm going to post some of them today and over the course of the week, just for posterity.

I took this shot of the town's eastern riverfront from the island on the opposite bank of the Cher.

As usual, you can enlarge to photos to see more detail by clicking or tapping on them a time or two.

Looking up at the church tower from down in the streets of the old town

A view from the bridge of chimneys and church towers

From the east end of town there are good views of the church towers too.

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By the way, today, June 12, is the 14th anniversary of the first night we ever spent in this house, back in June 2003. It's hard to believe we are so close to having lived here as long as we did in San Francisco (from 1986 to 2003). We had arrived in Saint-Aignan on June 7 and spent five days in a rented gîte nearby while cleaning, arranging for the delivery of necessary appliances, and figuring out how we would "camp" in the house until our container full of furniture and other belongings arrived by boat and moving van from San Francisco in July or August. We bought air mattresses to sleep on and outdoor furniture to use as a dining room set. It was exciting, and fun.