La colonne

This is the place de la Bastille, the site of the infamous prison stormed by revolutionaries in 1789. The column, la colonne de Juillet, was completed in 1835, not to commemorate the 1789 revolution, but to pay homage to the victims of the three-day July revolution of 1830, known as les trois glorieuses (the Three Glorious Days).

La colonne de Juillet, place de la Bastille, April 2008.

Speaking of glorious days, Tasha is going in to the see the vet this morning. She's having her teeth cleaned. She has to fast until after the procedure. Not her choice. Poor thing. She doesn't understand why she's not getting her regular breakfast. Her appointment is at 08h45. We'll see if she wants lunch when she gets home.

La tour

Eiffel, of course. Here's another one from the archives, taken in Spring 2018. I spent a weekend in Paris with some friends from New York. The weather was great, except for my last day when it got cold and windy and rainy. I spent most of that day eating lunch and drinking in a café waiting for my train back home. I'll always have Paris.

I've posted this shot before with a slightly different crop. Eiffel Tower from the Palais de Chaillot, April 2018.

In the here and now, our very mild December weather persists. Daily highs are in the 50sF. I hope we don't pay for this in the spring. The French have a saying: Noël au balcon, pâques au tison. That means if you can be comfortably outside at Christmas, you'll spend the following Easter in front of the fire.

Les Halles

In the very heart of Paris is a neighborhood called Les Halles. The name translates to "market halls" and, until the 1970s, the neighborhood was the site of the city's central wholesale food market. I can only imagine how difficult the daily traffic in and around the markets was back then. In 1971, the market was relocated to Rungis in the southern suburbs. The iconic iron and glass market pavilions, designed in the mid-nineteenth century by Victor Baltard, were demolished (save two, one reconstructed in Paris' eastern suburbs as a performance space, and another reconstructed in Japan.).

Under the canopy at Les Halles, street level, April 2018. More photos from my visit here.

What replaced the markets were a new regional rail hub and a huge underground shopping mall. The district became mostly pedestrianized. The new complex was in its final phases of construction when I first went to Paris in 1981. I remember coming out of the Les Halls subway station and making my way on plywood planks through the often muddy site to the nearby neighborhood where Ken lived then.

The the sixties and seventies style design of the complex did not age well and was itself demolished in 2010 then totally rebuilt, opening in 2018. I was in Paris in 2016 and took a walk around the place to see how it had changed. The reconstruction of the ground-level gardens and park were still not complete, but stores in the shopping center were beginning to open under a huge steel and glass canopy, with access to the reconfigured transit hub several levels below.

One day I'll go back and check it out again.

La Flèche

This is la flèche (spire) atop the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris seen from the dome of the Panthéon. I took the photo in 2016, about three years before the fire that destroyed it. The spire, that is. The cathedral still stands while the roof is being rebuilt. The Panthéon had just opened the dome to visitors after years of renovation and I took a tour one afternoon the day before a flight out to Canada and the US. I don't think I've published this photo before.

It will be a while before this view is possible again. I thought a somber treatment was appropriate.

The wind picked up about nine last night and howled until this morning. It wasn't all that bad, but there were some gusts that made the house creak. Tasha and Bert spent a good part of the night up on the bed.

Apples

For lack of any new photos, how do you like these apples? It's from ten years ago. I made a pie with them.

These are called "reinettes," pippins in English.

I woke up to rain this morning, pretty heavy. Radar shows it's moving off now. Thank goodness. The morning walks are no fun in the rain. As it is, we'll probably get muddy paws.

Television for dogs

During the winter, I put seed and suet balls out for the birds. The suet balls are suspended in a kind of a cage from the deck railing, opposite the sliding glass door. We get to see tits, robins, and finches feeding, some pecking at the suet, others picking up whatever falls to the deck. Each day, Tasha spends some time watching all the activity from her spot on the rug.

Tasha quietly watches the birds feeding on the deck. Once in a while, Bert the cat comes and watches with her.

Our Christmas day meal was delicious. I had made the dessert (pumpkin pie) on Christmas eve, so there were no worries about conflicts in the oven. The bird wasn't stuffed, except for some flavor ingredients like shallot, bay leaf, sage, lemon, and pepper. Ken made "stuffing," or dressing, separately, adding cornbread, pecans, and dried cranberries, among other things, to a meat terrine that he had made previously. I sauteed steamed Brussels sprouts, sliced into halves, and sprinkled lightly with flour until they had browned a bit. Ken made gravy from a base broth he made with the bird's giblets and other flavors. We thawed out some cranberry sauce from last year to go with it all.

Today: leftovers!

Merry, merry, ho-ho-ho

Merry Christmas 2021.

Ornamental [6]

This is a tiny Christmas stocking ornament, knitted (or maybe crocheted?) by my late stepmother back in the 1970s. As a stay-at-home mom back in those days, she took up making crafts as hobby. I have a small collection of some of the ornaments she made (time has not been kind to some) and I'm sure my siblings have some as well.

In hopes that Saint Nicholas soon would be there.

Well, here we are. Christmas Eve (it's not Christmas, and stop calling me Eve!). Bon réveillon and to all a good night!

Ornamental [5]

Rainbow trout? Probably not. It's one of a box of glass animal ornaments that Ken gave me in 1985. They are among my favorite ornaments. I've only broken one of the six since then. Not bad for a guy with ten thumbs.

Nothing fishy here.

Today we pick up the holiday bird, a guinea fowl capon, at the special marché de noël in Saint-Aignan. We still do the holiday thing American style. In France, the réveillon de noël is celebrated late at night on Christmas eve with a big meal that often includes a roast turkey. Neither one of us likes to eat a big meal just before bedtime even if we could stay up that late, so we'll have ours on Christmas day. But fear not! We'll enjoy our annual tradition of a cheese fondue on Friday.

Ornamental [4]

Talk to me of Mendocino
Closing my eyes I hear the sea
Must I wait, must I follow?
Won't you say "Come with me?"

 

This hand-painted glass ball is from Mendocino on the northern California coast. It was given to us by a friend who loved the place. We visited Mendocino  a few times while we lived in San Francisco. In addition to the dramatic coast, the town is charming, filled with inns and restaurants, and is home to a large community of artists and their galleries. It's worth a visit if you're in the area.

This ornament brings back fond memories of Northern California.

It looks like our cold spell will snap on Friday. The high pressure system that's been keeping us cool is moving off and a warmer system will bring some rain in off the North Atlantic. Temperatures are expected to reach into the double digits!

Song: "Talk to me of Mendocino" by Kate and Anna McGarrigle

Ornamental [3]

Tennis anyone? I'm a tennis fan, and I like this ornament in the form of a tennis ball. It's much smaller than an actual tennis ball, more like the size of a ping-pong ball. If only I could remember where it came from. Bought? A gift? I've forgotten. I used to have an even smaller tennis ball bobble attached to my rolling travel bag so I could pick it out easily in baggage claim. The last time I flew, the bag came back without the bobble. It probably broke off somewhere along the way.

The ornament is fuzzy like a real tennis ball. My suitcase bobble was made of hard plastic.

Our temperature this morning, as predicted, is below zero Celsius. Just barely, but below. It's a frosty solstice morning!

Ornamental [2]

The face of this familiar character is painted on the back of an oyster shell. We have two or three of these jolly fellows, each painted by Ken's late aunt back in the 90s. The strings of wooden cranberries came from Crate & Barrel in San Francisco.

Ho-ho-ho on the half shell.

We're moving into a few days of below-freezing morning low temperatures. Cold is good, to a point. We'll have to be careful of icy roads while running errands this week.

Ornamental [1]

This will be a busy week for a lot of people, covid restrictions notwithstanding. Not so much for us, except for some food shopping for special holiday meals. So I thought I'd do a week of Christmas tree ornaments. I'll try to post some that I haven't in the past, but long-time readers will likely recognize some of these.

The tiny canoe is made totally of carved wood.

First, the image of the week this week is of a giant redwood, or is it a sequoia, ornament carved into a slice of wood. I like its simplicity. It was a gift from a friend whose favorite place is Yosemite National Park.

Today's post is a canoe ornament that I think came from Restoration Hardware in Palo Alto, California, back in the late '90s, if memory serves. The boat reminds me of camping trips in the Adirondacks when I was a kid. My father would get me up before dawn to take me out in either a canoe or a standard rowboat onto a misty mountain lake to fish (it would be light outside by the time we got to the boat). He liked to use live worms for bait, bought at the local general store the day before. It was most boring, baiting the hooks was gross, and I hated the whole thing. It's weird to have a fond memory of something I did not enjoy. P.S., I did enjoy the camping. It was just the fishing that I didn't like.

Mister Moose lives the lush life

He used to visit all the very gay places,
Those come what may places
Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life,
To get the feel of life,
From jazz and cocktails.

 

It looks like Moosletoe has been dipping into the Christmas cheer a bit early this year.

 

Song: "Lush Life" by Billy Strayhorn.

Bougies

Gray days and early evenings call for colorful candles in the house. The candles in these cups are what we Americans would call tea lights. In French, they're bougies chauffe plat (plate warming candles). The cups themselves, votive holders in the US, are called photophores in French.

I got the cup holder in the US long ago. It came with clear glass cups. I found these colored cups here in France.

Did you know that there's a difference between tea lights and votive candles? I didn't. Tea lights are shorter and are contained in a metal cup that makes replacing the candle very easy. Votives are taller and are just bare candles that melt into whatever container you put them in. I just looked at Amazon for some battery-powered LED tea lights. That would make buying wax candles every year a thing of the past and eliminate the need to recycle the metal containers.

Jingle bells

I took this photo yesterday morning, looking up from the driveway just before sunrise. It's the annual "here are the lights on the house" photo. I used the tripod and the 24mm wide-angle lens.

Holiday lights 2021.

Also yesterday, I put the real fake Christmas tree up and strung the lights on it. I didn't get to the actual ornaments yet because I was making another batch of cranberry biscotti, this time with walnuts instead of pecans. Yum!

Inversion

We're having our typical late fall/early winter temperature inversion. High pressure is keeping the rain systems away, but it's also pinning the fog to the ground. The days are still and gray with no wind. You can hear condensation dripping from the trees. All sound is muffled. It's almost spooky. And it's predicted to last all week.

We didn't see the sun at all yesterday. The fog has been much thicker. Photo taken 26 December 2011.

This photo is from ten years ago this month, taken from the guest room window at sunset. The utility pole on the right is long gone; the power lines serving our hamlet were put underground. But that pole on the left is still with us because they didn't put the distribution lines underground, so each house is still connected by aerial wires for power and land-line telephone service.

Pecan cranberry biscotti

'Tis the season. It seems that every year during the holiday season I make some biscotti. This year I added dried cranberries and pecans to the basic recipe that I've been using for years (originally an almond biscotti).

Pecan and cranberry biscotti.

The process is simple. I mixed the ingredients together (flour, eggs, vanilla, sugar, berries, and nuts), formed the dough into two logs and baked them at low temperature until done. Then, after letting them cool a little, I sliced the logs into individual cookies and toasted them in the oven at a lower temperature. This batch didn't spread out as much as I expected, so the cookies are smaller than normal. But they still taste good.

Light my fire

Oh, the mess around the stove is frightful, but the fire is so delightful. Burning wood is a messy business. Cleaning up after burning is, too. Every day after a fire, I have to empty the ashes by brushing them into the tray below the floor of the stove and taking that tray down to the utility room to empty it into a galvanized ash bucket. Tasha likes to bark at me when I do this. When the bucket gets full, I take it out back and dump it.

Grape vine trunks on the left and inside the stove, a couple of birch branches on the right.

Meanwhile, fine ash accumulates on surfaces. And not-so-fine ash and pieces of wood accumulate on the floor of the fireplace. I'm constantly sweeping and periodically vacuuming, but it never really seems clean until spring when I stop making fires. Burning wood helps us to not use so much heating oil, so that's a good thing. And the stove burns hot (it was called "double burning") so there's hardly any visible smoke going out the chimney.

This stove is fifteen years old. It's got some cracks inside (the body of the stove is fine and there's no smoke in the house) and the front grill (that pointy thing that keeps the logs inside when you open the door) is warped because of the heat. We've thought about replacing the stove with a wider model so we can burn bigger logs, but the company that made this one no longer exists. And we have other projects that we want to do first. So there we are.

Sunday among the vines

It's Sunday in the waning days of autumn. That means that it's hunt day and, as the days continue to shorten, the window of light between dawn and 09h00 (when hunting begins) is narrow. Tasha and I have to get out and back before the guys with guns show up.

Tasha on the vineyard road on a foggy Saturday morning. Not a hunt day.

There's not really much danger to us. The hunters wear bright orange vests and are generally very aware of people walking along the vineyard road. I just worry that Tasha might get excited and cause a ruckus. If the hunters flush out a pheasant, Tasha will want to chase it. She chases birds. While they're flying. So it's best if we're back home by the time the hunters arrive.

Soupe au chou gratinée

Here's a variation on the classic French onion soup. We had (and still have) a good deal of broth from the potée (boiled dinner) that Ken made last weekend, so we decided to make a cabbage soup by chopping up the tender cooked cabbage and adding it back into the broth, then preparing it like French onion soup.

Two bowls of steaming cabbage soup.

First, Ken took the cabbage leaves out of the broth and strained the other vegetables out. He chopped the cabbage and added it back into the strained broth, then ladled the steaming soup into individual bowls.

Add thick slices of baguette and grated cheese.

He made croutons by slicing a baguette and laying the slices on the surface of the soup. This is a great way to use day-old or slightly stale bread because it soaks up the broth and softens. If the bread is fresh, you may want to lightly toast it so it doesn't disintegrate in the broth.

Melt the cheese in the oven and serve with freshly ground black pepper.

Finally, he sprinkled grated cheese on top of the bread slices. In this case, the cheese was a French (as opposed to Swiss) gruyère. Then the bowls went into the oven until the cheese melted. Et voilà !

For all you French experts out there, do you write soupe au chou in the singular as I did or in the plural (soupe aux choux)? I've seen it both ways on the internet. I chose the singular if for no other reason that only one chou went into the potée, but I don't know if that's how most people would do it.

Tasty terrines

I mentioned earlier that one of our supermarkets advertised some interesting terrines on special this week. It's that time of year when French traditional foods are offered everywhere for the holiday table. Not that they're unavailable year-round, just that they're much more varied and abundant this time of year. Our branch of the store didn't have every variety of terrine that was in the advertising circular, but I got one of the two that I wanted to try along with another less fancy, but no less tasty, one.

Top: chunks of goose meat and goose liver with mushrooms. Bottom: pork with peppercorns.

The first one is oie aux girolles (goose with girolle/chanterelle mushrooms). The second is a pork terrine with three kinds of peppercorns. Both are delicious and we're enjoying them with crusty bread and cornichons (little gherkins) as appetizers all week.

Burn, baby, burn

We inherited a pile of grape vine trunks when we moved into the house back in 2003. Since then, Ken and I have added to it a few times. However, because the trunks need to be cut to fit in our wood stove, they've languished in their spot in a far corner of the yard, piled up between the garden shed and the compost piles, covered with corrugated sheet metal to stay dry.

This is about 2/3 of the original pile. I've already burned about a third.

In the first years after we got the wood stove, I was busy cutting oak logs to burn, so I had no energy left to deal with the trunks. After that, I got a new chainsaw that was no fun to use because it was so difficult to start. Now, I have a new saw that works much better. I've been cutting the trunks one wheelbarrow full at a time. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get them all burned this season. They're very dry, and dry rot has set in, but they still burn hot, if not for long.

Winter wild

Wild carrot, that is. This is what becomes of the delicate wild carrot flower (also known as Queen Anne's Lace) in the late fall and winter. I haven't paid enough attention to know if the flower balls up this way as it dies, or if it just never fully opened in the first place.

It's still pretty.

All of yesterday's errands were accomplished more or less successfully. I now have significantly less hair than I did and it feels great, if not a little chilly. The recycling bins are now empty and ready for more. International postage was purchased and mail was sent, and I got a case of champagne and some interesting terrines (both sale items) from the grocery. One of the terrines is goose with girolle (aka chanterelle) mushrooms, the other is pork with three kinds of peppercorns. I was disappointed that they didn't have the pintade aux morilles (guinea fowl with morel mushrooms) that was also advertised.

Errands

I've got a few errands to run this morning. First up: a haircut. Our stylist was closed for a while because she was having surgery, so I haven't had my hair cut since mid-August. I've been called "scruffy-looking." Time to fix that. After that, the recycling center, the post office, and a stop in the grocery store for a few things that are on sale. What an exciting day ahead!

Tall grasses, seasonably brown.

Chocolate snails

I'm not a big chocolate fan, but every once in a while something will grab my attention. Like these individually wrapped escargots (snails) made of chocolate. These are milk chocolate (they also come in dark chocolate) filled with praline and bits of hazelnut. So I picked up a small box the other day. Ken and I finished them yesterday. They were very good, and now I think my curiosity is satisfied.

If you don't like real snails, you might like these.

The grocery stores set up a whole aisle of chocolates each year for the holiday season. It's a wall of confections in every shape and flavor. They also make displays of champagne and other sparkling wines. Very festive.

Linguini with white clam sauce

This has become an annual between-the-holidays dish for us. Many of the local fishmongers sell coques (cockles) this time of year. Cockles are essentially clams, but much smaller. They are harvested off the shores of the eastern Atlantic Ocean, from Iceland in the north through Europe to as far south as Senegal in the west of Africa.

A hurried photo (I was hungry!) We may have these again a time or two before the season is over.

I got a kilogram of the bivalves for Saturday's lunch. Although the fishmonger said these had already been disgorged, Ken put them into a saltwater bath for a couple of hours with some cornmeal just to be sure. And we're glad he did because they expelled a lot of sand, and sand isn't fun to munch on.

As usual, the coques are steamed in a white wine sauce with minced shallot and garlic and plenty of black pepper. Ken added a dash of red pepper flakes for a little kick. When the clams open, they're ready to be mixed into cooked and drained linguini (250 grams dry) and garnished with chopped parsley. Serve with crusty bread and a crisp white wine. Lunch is ready!

Looking back in white and black

Now that I'm running out of fresh photos, it's raining outdoors. That means I won't be taking the camera out on my walks with Tasha. Oh well, there's always a food photo or two.

Looking easterly toward the hamlet from the vineyard.

I found coques (cockles) at the market yesterday, so today we're making linguini with white clam sauce for lunch. The market in Montrichard is larger than at Saint-Aignan. The town was pretty with shop lights glowing brightly and snow flurries flying. The poultry vendor told me that Saint-Aignan's Christmas market will be held on Thursday the 23rd this year since Christmas falls on Saturday. Next week, or the week after, one of us will go into town to place the order for our holiday bird. I think we're leaning toward a chapon de pintade (Guinea fowl capon).

At least it's not corn

Fall brings a lot of browns to the landscape around us. The grape vines are naked now, their brown leaves carpet the ground below them. Most of the fall color in the woods is more brown than orange or yellow. Late summer wildflowers have sown their seeds and stand dead and brown on the margins of the vineyard parcels. The grasses and evergreens provide a contrast of deep green against the brown. And the rose hips punctuate it all with brilliant red.

Remnants of wildflowers. They'll be back next year.

I'm making a run to the market this morning, mostly to find out what the holiday schedule will be. While there I'm going to look for coques (cockles, like little clams) for a linguini with white clam sauce lunch over the weekend. Then it's off to the supermarket to get whatever else is on the list. Hopefully today's predicted rain will hold off until I'm done.

Again with the corn?

When will it end? The short answer: today. The long answer: I don't have any more photos of the corn. I will, however, let you know when the two plots are harvested, or at least cut down.

I think the little corn plants are kind of pretty. The colors are subtle, but they're there.

Looks like a messy weather weekend is forming up. Freezing morning temperatures will give way to warm (ish), rainy days. Great dog-walking weather. Not.

The nose knows

Or at least it seeks to find out. Some deer (I think) ripped this ear of corn off its stalk and enjoyed a meal or two of fresh corn kernels. The cob is in the dirt road not far from a stand of corn out among the grape vines. Just as I took the photo, a certain canine stuck her nose into the shot (second photo).

Corn cob as art. Second attempt, sans dog.

This morning's low temperature at the house is about 9ºC (about 48ºF). Compare that to yesterday's low of just below freezing. We should be having some rain this morning as the warmer system moves through. According to the radar, it's just about here as I type this (06h45).

I smell deer breath!

Ear in the husk

This ear of corn is still attached to its stalk, but it's been opened and the kernels have been nibbled. I'm thinking chevreuil (roe deer). They're tall enough to stand next to the stalk and easily reach the ears.

This ear didn't get very big, but it provided a couple of tasty, I'm sure, mouthfuls to some deer.

Another day starting out at freezing, or a little lower depending on where you stand. Yesterday I sawed some more old grape vine trunks for the wood burner, and I burned a good deal of them. I may be out there again today to do some more.

I'm planning a market run to the nearby town of Montrichard on Friday. I want to check out our poultry vendor's calendar for the holidays so we'll know when to place our order for the Christmas bird and when, and where, to pick it up. This year is tricky because Christmas Day falls on Saturday, the day of the regular market here in Saint-Aignan (our poultry vendor does both markets each week). I'm sure it's fallen on a Saturday before, but I don't remember the details of how that affected the market schedule.

You scratch my back...

These are cynorhodon (rose hips) from the églantier (wild or dog rose), common along the edges of the vineyard road and woods around us. They provide a nice touch of red this time of year. According to Wikipedia, a common name for these is gratte-cul (butt scratcher). Apparently, the fibers inside the hip cause an itchy rash when they come into contact with human skin. Who was the unfortunate one to find that out first, I wonder?

You are advised not to rub these on your backside. Or any other side.

We're down to freezing again this morning. At least the precipitation seems to be over. Until Wednesday, when a warmer system is expected. December will be coming in like a... uh... goat?

Plowed

One of the vineyard parcels that was torn up recently has now been plowed. Except for a strip leading to the pile of grape trunks in the middle. Interesting. Will the trunks be taken away? Burned between now and spring? Who can say?

There's an even bigger parcel on the left that hasn't been plowed. But the trunks are gone.

Lunch plans for today's hachis parmentier (shepherd's pie) have been modified. Ken's making a lamb and barley soup instead. He also put away enough lamb to make a curry and a tajine (spicy north African stew) in the coming days. The soup is going to get a lot of stuff out of the freezer, so that's good. And with our chilly, windy, and showery weekend, the soup will be a perfect meal.

Soggy Saturday

It rained last evening. This morning, the stars and the waning moon shine brightly as gusty winds whirl around us. Everything is wet outdoors.

Things you don't see in the field: those barely visible filaments of spider silk.

The good news is that, so far, our central heating boiler has not blown out. We'll keep and eye on it through the day, but I'm hopeful that the problem has indeed been fixed. Cross my fingers, spit on the ground!

Stalked

Corn stalked, that is. They still stand, in this parcel and in another larger one. I've seen a few cobs on the ground nearby, stripped of their kernels. I guess it's wildlife. Deer? Boar? Badgers? No idea.

These are pretty spindly corn stalks. They don't get irrigated, except by nature.

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone. Our leg-of-lamb meal was a success and there are plenty of leftovers. I think the plan for today is sliced cold lamb with Ken's home-made mayonnaise. An hachis parmentier (shepherd's pie) is likely over the weekend. And who knows what else? Ken took some photos of the meal and put them up on his blog today.

By the way...

A week has gone by since the 2021 Beaujolais nouveau was released and I haven't mentioned it here. We've been drinking different bottles all week and have found about half of them, well, ordinary. They taste just like Beaujolais does when it's not nouveau. A few of them, however, have that characteristic "new wine" taste. Ken got a bunch more of those in his last supermarket run.

One of the Beaujolais nouveau wines that we liked. Or, what's left of it.

We don't expect Beaujolais nouveau to be superb wine. It's just a way to mark time and the season. We usually have a nouveau to go with our American Thanksgiving feast. This year we've chosen a local "new" wine, a Touraine primeur, as they call it. This one comes from Thésée, a town just across the river from us.

And speaking of Thanksgiving, we will be preparing our traditional roast leg of lamb for lunch today. We'll serve it with flageolets (little green beans) and maybe some topinambours (Jerusalem artichokes). For a starter, we'll have some of Ken's home-made pork terrine with cornichons (little gherkins). I made a pumpkin pie for dessert using a muscade pumpkin from last year's garden (roasted and frozen). Happy Thanksgiving!

Come, mister tally man

With four quickly ripening bananas in the kitchen, what was I to do but make a loaf of banana bread? The recipe is a basic, standard recipe. The only modifications I made was to cut the sugar (I used cassonade instead of white sugar) down by half and to add walnuts. The recipe is quick to put together and the batter baked for one hour, exactly as the recipe said it would.

A loaf of banana bread. It's actually more like a cake than a bread.

We're down to just about freezing this morning, according to the thermometer on the outside of our house. I'm sure it will be below freezing out in the vineyards. It's my morning to walk, so I will certainly bundle up!

Tasha Tuesday

While taken in roughly the same location as the last Tasha Tuesday post, this photo is three weeks newer. Tasha looks smaller because I used the 24mm wide angle lens for this one instead of the 50mm lens I normally use. All that means is that, with this photo, you get to see more of the landscape.

Another view of the vineyard parcel that's being dug up this fall.

The sky is clear and the moon is shining brightly this morning, and the temperature is a degree or so above freezing. Novembrrrr is living up to its name.

The walnut tree

There were hardly any walnuts on this tree this year. In those years when there's a good crop, the nuts are too small to be worth taking. The wildlife gets most of them.

The vineyard walnut tree on a chilly and damp November morning.

The weather continues to be typically fall-like. Windless foggy days. Dew-drenched grass. Water dripping from the trees. One day soon, the high pressure systems will start to falter and the cold fronts will resume their march across France, bringing winter winds and rain (and maybe snow).

Pull up your trunks

This is part of the vineyard parcel out behind our house that's being dug out to make room for new vines. The canes were cut off and mulched. The guide wires and posts have been removed. All that's left is for the trunks to come out. I wonder when that will happen?

It almost looks like a cemetery. You can see the gaps where vines have died over the years.

Speaking of vine trunks, we have a rather large pile of them out behind the garden shed. Most of them were here when we moved in (almost nineteen years ago!) and I added a bunch more during the years that Callie would bring one home from each of her walks. They're kept dry under a couple sheets of corrugated sheet metal. Old vine trunks are famously used for barbecues in these parts and, I suspect, wherever grapes are grown. People say they give good flavor to whatever is being grilled. I did some of that back before we had the gas grill. Not sure about the flavor thing, but they burn well.

I always planned to burn the trunks in the wood stove, but the stove turned out to be too small to fit them in. Now, with the new easy-to-start chainsaw, I've begun the process of cutting them down to size (one cut does it) and burning them. If I'm lucky and keep at it, I might get that whole pile burned this season. Free firewood!

Les quais de la Seine

Here's one from the archives. People enjoying a warm spring day on the banks of the Seine in central Paris, April 2009. If I remember correctly, I met up with some American friends for a day or two while they were vacationing in Paris. We had lovely spring weather, and I had some time to wander around on my own.

Just behind where they're sitting is a stair that comes down to river level from the streets above.

My camera at the time was a Panasonic Lumix FZ7, my first digital camera. I haven't used it now for many years. I should probably get it out and see if it still works. It's a small camera and could come in handy when (or should I say "if") we start to travel again.

Maple

This variety of érable (maple), whatever it is, has dark red leaves that turn bright orange in the fall. The leaves are all on the ground now; this photo is a couple of weeks old. Now it's time to get out there and rake.

The two maples next to our driveway have deep red leaves in summer that turn bright orange in fall.

When I got up this morning I saw the full moon out the window. A few minutes later I looked again and it was gone. The eclipse is just about to start, but I have a feeling that the fog thickened and will obscure it. Oh well, we'll see it all on tv and the internet.

Throwback Thursday

My friend and former colleague, Andy Nash, sent me this photo last week. It was taken (I'm not sure by whom) in 1992 when Andy ran for a seat on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District. He didn't win, but it was a good try. I was fresh out of graduate school that year and lucky to have found a job with these amazing people.

The candidate, Andy, on the left, our friend and colleague Lucy W. in the center, and me on the right. 1992.

I worked with Andy, Lucy, and our boss Mike, at Silicon Valley's transportation policy agency and met and worked with transportation professionals across the Bay Area. I went on to become an executive at the San Francisco Municipal Railway thanks in no small part to the confidence they, and others, had in me. Good times.

Just hanging around

We're still waiting and wondering when (and if) our deck contractor will start work. We may be waiting until spring at this point. Abandoning this contractor to find another sounds good, but I'm not sure it's worth getting at the back of someone else's line, if we could find someone who would even bother calling us back. I note that the husband of our mayor recently told Ken that he waited a year and a half to have a concrete slab poured next to his garage for a planned carport. Another neighbor has been having her house re-stuccoed and the work has been going on and off for over a year now. Chimney sweeps are overwhelmed and most don't even respond. One did answer our call, but said he has too much work and can't take on any more. So it's not just us that this is happening to.

More fall colors in the vineyard. Spring may come before our contractor does.

People we know have speculated that because of covid folks stopped traveling and started spending their money on home improvements. There's a lot of work and not enough contractors. So we wait.

Tasha Tuesday

With morning temperatures in the single digits (celsius), our sunrise walks with Tasha are brisk. It's nowhere near bone-chilling cold; we haven't had a freeze yet. It's just crisp and frosty enough to keep us moving. It's quite invigorating. Tasha takes it in stride, as it were. Her thick coat (do I need to say that she needs a good brushing?) keeps her warm enough, I suspect.

Tasha on the vineyard road on a foggy fall morning.

We can feel the holiday season approaching. Thanksgiving is next week (for us Americans) and we'll be going out to shop for the annual leg of lamb a day or two before. The store circulars are already filled with ads for holiday foods, toys, and decorations. I need a new string of lights. Ho, ho, ho!

Fall marches on

Here we are in the middle of November already. We've had a couple of cold spells, but they were short lived. Mild weather and very little wind have been the rules for a while. Fall often brings high pressure that parks itself in the middle of France causing temperature inversions. In other words, still and foggy days.

A vineyard parcel at sunrise a couple of weeks ago. The grape leaves are mostly gone now.

We don't get harsh winters, and recent winters have been unusually mild. It's normal for it to snow a little, usually in late January and in February, but it doesn't last very long. I hope we get some snow this year. It's pretty and the cold weather is good for the environment.