Our road

Here's a view of our road from about halfway up the hill, looking back down. Callie and I walk up this way after our trek around the wheat field. On this day one of the neighbors at the bottom was hauling some logs out of the woods with his garden tractor. The hill is a good climb; it's steeper than it looks.

Looking down the hill, toward the river, on a summer afternoon.

We took the mini-chainsaw back to the store where we bought it to ask why we couldn't get it started. The guy took us outside and, after a few tries, got it started right up. Figures. At any rate, he said not to fully engage the choke when starting it cold. He said that it's too warm outside to use the choke full on. So he showed me where he positioned it (just barely engaged) and started it up a second time.

The saw's instructions tell you to push the choke in all the way when starting a cold engine, but it does not work. I was just flooding the engine and making things worse. Today I will try what he showed me and see if I can get it running myself.

Tree trunks

Living in cities as I did for many years, I had forgotten about the woods. Sure, there are plenty of trees in parks and I spent a fair amount of time in the country and camping. But here, for the past ten years, I've had daily contact with the woods in all seasons of the year.

Wild trees in the woods along the path we take down the hill.

The woods and forests where we live are not exactly wild. They're managed habitats. The trees are thinned and cut for firewood and other uses, animals are introduced for hunting and wild populations are culled so as not to pose a threat. Some forests are seriously managed almost like gardens, other stands of woods, like those around our house, are left on their own except for the occasional thinning.

The wheat field

This is part of the wheat field down the hill from our house. It's been planted in wheat for the last couple of years, but I've also seen colza (rape seed) planted here in years past. The field was harvested a week ago and plowed and readied for the next crop.

That telephone pole will be removed soon as part of the under-grounding of the power lines that feed our hamlet.

The wheat is normally planted in the fall when it sprouts and over-winters as small plants. In the spring the plants send up their stalks and the seed heads form. The grain matures in the summer and is harvested this time of year. I'm waiting to see what the farmer plants this year.

Part of our route

Here's another of the roads that Callie and I walk on when we're not in the vineyards. It's part of the network of unpaved roads that skirt around the wheat field in the valley below our house. You can see a vacation house on the right (in this view) that's only occupied a couple of weeks out of the year.

Looking back along our route toward the woods.

Whoever owns the property where I'm standing keeps the ground under the trees very tidy. There's a kind of a carport (out of the photo on the right) that stores an old horse-drawn wagon. Further along are a few more houses that front on the main road, but whose back yards are connected by the dirt road.

I see you

Callie and I often walk down through the woods into the river valley on our afternoon walks, making a loop around a large wheat field and along a dirt road to rejoin our own road at the bottom of the hill. Then we pass through a small neighborhood before climbing back up the hill to our hamlet.

This pretty young lab knows us by sight and watches carefully as we pass by.

Many dogs live along this route and, if they're out, they will all come by to bark at us as we walk by. This is one of the regulars, but I don't know her name. She'll run along inside the fence to make sure we're not a threat. Callie scoots by quickly on the other side of the road, no sniffing, no greeting, not wanting to get involved.

The grapes are turning

Ripening, actually. The red grapes are starting to darken and the green grapes are getting paler. They all start out the same color.

Once the grapes turn, it's only a matter of time until harvest.

We are starting to feel fall in the air. Sunday was the first day all month that the outside temperature didn't break 20ºC (68ºF). And we had a few rain showers. The forecast is for us to get a little warmer again, but I'm afraid the heat of summer is behind us for another year. You never know, but with the days getting shorter, we can tell that fall is on the way.

Signs of summer's end

Among the fall wildflowers that I see out in the vineyard is this variety of daisy. I usually only notice them when they look like this, their petals pointed downward as if they're tired and heat-worn. I don't see this in the spring.

They look like rain hats to me.

It's the last week of August, which for many French people means the last week of summer vacations before school starts up in the first week of September. The supermarket circulars have been hawking school supplies for a couple of weeks now. Before we've noticed, they will have slid into Christmas mode.