Snail shells. Probably store-bought for stuffing and serving. I don't know when, if ever, we used them. We've got snail dishes that obviate the need for shells. Another one of life's little mysteries.
It's just over six degrees this morning. Not really all that cold, but I feel cold. Like, wrap up in a blanket cold.
Or not. This year, I strung lights along the deck railing. You can't tell it by this photo, though, unless you look real hard. I find my confidence on ladders is waning, especially when it's raining and everything is wet. So the lights end up where I don't have to climb.
We can see the lights from inside the house and it's festive, so we don't feel like we're missing anything. Christmas Eve is in two days! I'm looking forward to our traditional cheese fondue.
Leaves stuck to a damp deck on a foggy morning are common in the fall. It could be worse; wind often blows the bigger maple leaves up onto the deck, but there weren't many, if any, on this morning. The driveway just below is another story.
It's a chilly 7ºC (about 45ºF) out there this morning. That's why it's called Novembrrr. It's time to start thinking about bringing plants in for the winter.
Finally, here's a photo of Tasha shortly after her grooming last week. She's not very good at "sit and stay." She sits on command, but the "stay" part is not one of her best tricks. So I get photos like this one where, at least, she's looking at the camera.
The chimney is swept. There was a lot of soot; I'm glad it's gone. We also had new faucets and a new drain plug installed in the bathroom (sink and bidet). It's nice to have things working as they should again.
As you probably know by now, the plumber is coming this morning to sweep our chimney and clean out the wood stove. We have a few things to move around before he gets here. I'll leave you with a photo of the fireplace and stove taken back in winter of 2017.
The new water heater was installed yesterday and now we're back in "bidness," as some say. It's a big tank by French standards, but we've never run out of hot water with one this size, whereas we used to run out with the smaller model that we replaced back in 2010. Especially when we had house guests.
The plumber agreed to clean our chimney (plumbers do that here) in September. He actually gave us an appointment in writing! This is good because, in France, insurance companies require that you clean the chimney once a year, and homeowners need to have proof that it was done if there's ever an incident. I plan to refrain from building a fire until it's done.
We've had a little relief from the recent heat, but the forecast is for another heat spell to build in over the weekend. Luckily, we tend to have nice cool mornings. We throw open all of the windows so that cool air can move through the house and push the warm air out. Nature's AC.
Tuesday night, after the storm, we had a few power outages. I woke up at one point to complete silence and dark. No humming of the fridge, no spinning of fan blades, no tiny indicator lights here and there. No power at all, just dark silence. Then suddenly it all came on, startling me. We have a number of lamps around the house that are on timers. All but two are digital. The digital timers have battery back-up so most power outages don't change their clocks or their settings. Nice. However, there are still two analog timers that need to be reset after a power interruption. When I forget to reprogram them, lights go on and off at very odd times. Bother.
...under the sun. We're enjoying a series of beautiful days and I'm almost done cutting the grass. I've also made another pass with the weed killer mix. The forecast for the next few days is "unsettled." Maybe some thunderstorms, warmer temps, then cooler. Who knows. Meanwhile, we're enjoying being out on the deck.
This morning I'm taking Tasha in for her teeth cleaning. The poor thing doesn't understand why she's not getting her breakfast today. Doctor's orders mean nothing to a dog. I will have to be careful while walking her this morning; she will try to eat "stuff" off the ground (I won't go into any more detail than that). Her appointment is for 08h45, so it will all be over soon enough.
It wouldn't be France without geraniums. This is one of two pots on the deck. They've overwintered twice, both times out on the deck, but pulled back against the house. When spring comes, they send up new stems, leaves, and flowers. This year is the third year that they've made it through winter. I suppose our lack of hard freezes has something to do with their survival.
Spring cleaning continues. Today I plan to "do" the den. I'll take out all the moveable furniture (I won't try to move the china cabinet that's in there). Chairs, filing cabinets, lamps, plants, and the area rug will come out, as will my computer, scanner, and printer. After that, I want to clean the windows and wash the curtains as well as "shampoo" the area rug (carpet cleaner spray in a can and a vacuum). If it's raining outside (and it's predicted) I may skip the window exteriors for now. Then I'll clean the tile floor. I can't remember the last time I did the floor. It more than needs it.
We enjoyed a mostly sunny day on Friday, with another expected today. Of course, cloudless days are often chilly. I ended up putting a fire in the wood burner in the afternoon to take the chill off and to give the central heating a rest.
When the sun does shine in this time of year, it casts shadows around the rooms. This is a corner of the dining area with the Eiffel Tower and its shadow. Our friend Cheryl gave us the tower. It came from Pottery Barn, if memory serves, back in San Francisco. Back in the olden days. The little wiry figure (sold separately) has magnetic feet.
The contractor showed up on time yesterday morning to replace the motor on our overhead garage door, fix a little glitch in one of the new roll-down shutters, and to take measurements for a a new set of standard shutters on the garden shed. He spent about three hours working on the new motor. The shutter glitch took a minor adjustment and now it seems to be fixed.
As for the garden shed, we decided that he'd repair the existing door rather than replace it. It looks like new, even though we had it installed in 2003. All it needs is to have the sheared bolts drilled out and new bolts put in. He seemed to think it would be fastoche (easy). Then he'll put in new all-white PVC shutter doors on the window.
His company is called CLP Fermetures. A fermeture is a closure and, as you can imagine, they do gates, shutters, windows, doors, and anything else that closes (and opens!). To date, he's installed eight shutters on our house, one garden gate, and one garage door. He didn't install the garden shed door.
We're expecting the guys who did our window shutters and our garage door to show up first thing this morning. They have a new motor for the garage door that they installed back in 2018. I also need to show them a small problem that we're having with one of the shutters they installed last month (we're very happy with them otherwise). Finally, I want to ask them for an estimate for a new door and shutter on the garden shed. The door we had installed in 2003 is literally coming off its hinges and the old wooden shutter has seen better days.
I made a little more progress in the yard yesterday afternoon. The hortensias (hydrangeas) are pruned back and I got a start on pruning back the out-of-control glycine (wisteria). I hope to finish that today.
Happy equinox to all! It's the first day of spring!
And another year passes. I was messing with the phone camera (documenting the holiday lights -- they all get put away tomorrow) and inadvertently caught Niles (David Hyde Pierce) on the tv. We're streaming Frasier these days. Pierce and I were born in the same year and about thirty miles from each other in upstate New York. I'm pretty sure there are many more than six degrees of separation between us.
I'm heading out to the market this morning to pick up the shellfish for our NYE meal of linguini with white clam sauce. In place of clams, we like to use cockles. Happy New Year!
I should have waited until it got darker, but I was impatient. Still, you can see the lights hanging over the deck.
We just approved an estimate to have five new roll-down shutters installed. Merry Christmas to us! Two of the new shutters will be on windows in this photo. First, the kitchen window (middle left) shutter will be replaced. We had the current shutter put in almost twenty years ago. It's brown while all the shutters we've had replaced on the house since are white. The new shutter will be solar-powered like those we installed on the back (west side) of the house. The attic window in the dormer will also get a new shutter (as will the other attic window on the north side). They've never shutters, but since we had the attic finished, it makes sense. Two glass block windows on the south side, ground floor, (along the road) will also get shutters. That's a total of five new shutters for the house.
We also got an estimate for the deck door/window, too, but that's a big and costly job; we decided to skip it for now.
This year's tree. I still have some ornaments to hang before I put all the empty boxes away.
The replacement part for the wood stove arrived yesterday. It was late, which made me think it wasn't coming, but it showed up. Yay! The package was wrapped tighter than an Egyptian pharaoh and took a lot of effort to undo, but it's here. I decided to try it out right away.
The old part had been deformed by eighteen seasons of fire. It had curved into a near semi-circle before finally breaking in two. It was no longer able to fulfill its function: to keep burning logs inside the stove when the door is open. What's more, the curvature significantly reduced the space available for logs and thus the size of the fires I could make.
As you can see, the replacement part is straight as an arrow and, for the moment, looks rather spiffy. I'm hoping that it will outlive the rest of the stove. I'm not sure what the normal lifespan of this stove is supposed to be. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
As I mentioned, this year's firewood is stacked and ready for the season. I've already had a few small fires. With the stove grille (that part that keeps the logs from falling out when the door is open) broken, I don't want to risk a regular sized fire.
New problem: the battery in the riding mower is dead. Turns out that it's my fault. I was supposed to remove the battery before parking the mower for the season. I was also expected to recharge the battery about once a month during the off season. The mower didn't come with a charger and nobody mentioned it to me when I bought the machine. Of course, it's in the owner's manual. Which I didn't read in depth. A few days ago, one of our neighbors (who has essentially the same mower) asked if I had taken the battery out. Uh, no. So now I have to go to the hardware store where I bought the mower and ask about rechargers. From what I can tell, the battery's sole purpose is to start the mower's engine. And mine is now dead.
This morning I got an email from a local friend who reads this blog from time to time. She read yesterday's post and took note of our problem with the wood burning stove. She suggested I go on line to look for replacement parts for the stove. I hadn't even considered that! I figured that since the company who made the stove went out of business years ago, there wouldn't be an opportunity to find parts.
Well, I forgot about third party enterprises that collect parts and stock them. Et voilà ! I looked around and found the exact product I needed for our stove and ordered it. It'll be delivered to our house in two weeks. Total cost: €50 (about fifty bucks US). Thank goodness for friends and blogs!
Ken and I started work on stacking the firewood that was delivered on Friday. The pile (if shaped a little differently) is almost as big as the car. I think we got almost half of it done before we quit. I'll be back out there this morning. Ken might be out there, too, unless he's busy making lunch. Pictures of the stacked wood to come.
Now we have a wood stove issue to deal with. The front grill that holds burning logs back from the stove's glass door broke in two a few days ago. It's been deformed by eighteen years of use, but I never imagined it would break. It's made of cast iron, after all. We're trying to get in touch with the company that installed the stove in 2006, but they seem to be busy at the moment. And we're in the middle of a holiday weekend. Ken will likely call next week to get an appointment. We need to figure out if there's a grill replacement or fix available. If not, we may have to considering replacing the stove. Ka-ching!
This is looking from our great room out onto the deck and beyond. Our two red maple trees (that's likely not their biological name) reached peak color this week. The driveway (just below) is paved with fallen leaves. The annual cleanup job is going to be fun. Not.
Things need to dry up a bit, weather wise. It's not raining, but the fog seems permanent. It's cold (but not near freezing) and everything is dripping. Typical dreary fall weather, for us.
