Logs

Log jam or log preserves? LOL. It wasn't that long ago that the land owners around us harvested a good portion of their woods. The results are stacks of logs here and there. This one, I'm guessing, belongs to the Artsy Organized Neighbor or someone like him (as Ur-spo might say).

Each of these logs is one meter long.

We have a car problem to deal with today. The Citroën's battery has given out and, alas, the poor car won't start. Cold weather may be the culprit. Since cars are Ken's domain, he will do most of the work. That mostly means phoning the rescue folks provided by our insurance company and our local garage for a jump and possibly a new battery. We've been, as you might say, "down this road" before with the other car. I am here for support.

Fans

I woke up this morning to a strangely familiar sound. It sounded like airplanes of the propeller variety, but hovering in one place, like helicopters, not getting any closer, not getting any farther. Then it came to me: vineyard fans. They're used to mix the air on very cold mornings in an attempt to keep newly formed buds from freezing. The temperature is hovering around zero this morning, and I've seen buds in places, so that makes sense.

At woods' edge.

I'll have to try to take some photos of the buds as they become more numerous, not to mention bigger. In the meantime, here's some more moss in the woods out by the Artsy Organized Neighbor's property. 

Moss

All the rain we've had this winter has been heaven for the moss. It's thriving this year.

Moss grows at the base of virtually every tree in the woods around our local vineyard parcels.

I did decide to go out yesterday. It rained most of the day, as predicted. This morning is cold, below 5ºC. But there's no rain in today's forecast.  

The rain is Tess, the fire's Jo

The wind kicked up over night and now it's howlin' out there. It's not so bad, actually, just kind of gusty. It's been worse. But I can hear it. I have an errand to run in town this morning. I don't know if I'll hunker down or venture out. The sun will be up soon (yay!) and I'll reassess then.

A familiar view.

Yesterday's fog cleared pretty quickly and we enjoyed some sun. But it's still pretty chilly out there, made a little more so by the wind. 

Going down

Temperatures. Back to single digits. It's 6.1ºC out there this morning. About 43ºF. Brr. No danger of freezing. But, as temperatures continue to fall, there could be frost. Historically, France's frost danger ends around the middle of May, so we have a while to go.

An artichoke in the back yard. Way past time to remove the old flowers.

We're also socked in this morning. Gray and wet and cold. Lovely. I'm wearing long-johns again on our morning walks.

One lump or two?

While Ken enjoys a couple of cuppas (tea) in the morning, I drink coffee made in a "French press." We both drank coffee for a while from an automatic drip machine but, for some reason, we tired of that. Ken went back to tea and I started up again with coffee. And one lump of sugar. Actually, it's a half-lump.

One of our two-cup French press coffee pots.

It's raining this morning. I suppose that means there's no chance of seeing the landscaper today. Ugh. 

All clear

Did I tell you about our little scare with Tasha? I think Ken blogged about it, but here it is in a nutshell. About a month ago, we noticed that Tasha was drinking a lot of water, way more than she normally does. One of our neighbors, also a dog person, said that could be a sign of diabetes. That was nerve wracking. So Ken stopped by the vet's office while out running errands and made an appointment for that afternoon. The vet took a blood sample and a urine sample (he said it could also be a urinary tract infection) and prescribed a course of antibiotics. Both tests were negative. Nonetheless, we noticed that Tasha has cut down on her water intake. So we feel good about that. The vet said to let her run the full course of antibiotics just for good measure. That will be over in a few days.

We're still waiting for the landscape guy. I'm starting to wonder if he'll get the work done before summer. Bother. This view of our hamlet is toward the northeast. The yellow spot is our forsythia.