A Couple More

Just two more photos from Selles-sur-Cher before I move on...

The yellow postal cars and vans are ubiquitous in France. There's even a yellow postal TGV that speeds up and down the rails moving mail. Mail service in France is pretty darned good, by American standards. Letters go from town to town in one or two days. Here in the country, you get to know your local postal staff and vice versa. Especially the delivery person. Each year around holiday season, the postal carrier stops by to "sell" you a calendar, essentially collecting a tip. But it's a pleasure to "buy" the calendar since our carrier is so nice and takes care of us regarding packages, etc.

It's all wonderful, of course, until La Poste makes changes and your local staff moves to another town which is what happened here this month . Our small town post office's hours have been reduced, so the full-time staff was offered reduced hours (and reduced pay) to stay, or a transfer to maintain their positions and salaries. Both ladies transferred and we miss them. Now the whole town has to get to know a couple of new guys and start re-building relationships. Since the post office is also a bank, there are lot of people who go there quite regularly and rely on its being open to transact business; I've heard some grumblings about the reduced hours already. At least they didn't close the office altogether. We still seem to have our regular delivery person, however, so all is not new.

This is a close-up of the stone floor in the church at Selles-su-Cher.

Yesterday was very hot for us - over 29ºC (about 85ºF). We spent the morning working outside (gardening), had a lunch of pork chops and pasta with pesto sauce made from our own basil. We will have zucchini and yellow squash very soon (pictures coming!). In the afternoon we took naps and sat out on the deck not moving around very much. Today will be more of the same. In fact, the whole week is predicted to be hot with highs in the upper 20s C (mid 80s F). The humidity is very low, so it's not so bad, but there's no rain in sight. The drought continues.