Monday macros

While the leaves are gone, some apples still cling to the pommiers (apple trees). I wouldn't want to eat any of them, but they make for pretty photos.

A tiny wrinkled apple in the morning sunlight, 100mm (macro), f/4.5, 1/250s, ISO 1250.

The big news in France this weekend is the result of the second round of regional elections. It gets complicated, but the upshot is that the extreme right wing party, the Front National, didn't take a single region even though it did very well in the first round. The standard right wing, Sarkozy's aptly re-branded Républicains, took seven of the thirteen regions in play, even though the numbers show that the left wing Socialists took more départments than the right (which doesn't have any real impact since these were regional elections and not departmental elections). See? It already got complicated. I'll stop there.

A vineyard staple

These are agrafes (staples) that are used to tie vine canes to their support wires in the vineyard. In most cases, the single cane that is left after pruning in bent horizontally, then fastened  to the wire with these little metal rings and a mechanical stapler. Year after year, the staples accumulate on the wire. This bunch is gathered up against a post.

Staples from years past.

Ken and I went to the market on Saturday morning and ordered our Christmas turkey. We'll pick it up at the special market day on Wednesday the 23rd. We also got a bunch of coques (cockles or little clams) for our lunch yesterday: linguine with white clam sauce. They were delicious! There'll be another special market day on Wednesday the 30th, so we'll go and get some oysters for New Year's Eve then.

What's on tv

Star Wars. Nothing but Star Wars. This week's television program magazine comes with one of two covers to celebrate the release of the new Star Wars movie. One cover represents the "light" side of the Force (I've never heard of it referred to that way), the other represents the Dark Side. The cover we got in the mail is, as you can see, the "light" side version. You can see the Dark Side version in the inset.

The television program announces a theatrical release. Entertainment news is entertainment news.

What NOT to watch this week. Our tv magazine rates shows and movies using a star system: one star is ok, four stars is best. They use another symbol for really bad movies: the red dot. It means "à zapper" (change the channel!). The editors often include comments about the movie that make me laugh.

Even a French film starring Catherine Deneuve can get a red dot, as this one has. Elie Semoun is a French comedian and actor. He's ok in small doses, but is not one of my favorites. I probably won't be watching this film.

Cyprien. French movie directed by David Carhon, 2009.
With Elie Semoun, Catherine Deneuve, and Vincent Desagnat.
► Thanks to his magic deodorant, a particularly ugly IT guy finally becomes handsome and makes a place for himself in the fashion magazine for which he works.
The characters are total caricatures, painted in broad strokes with disdain, and the direction is transparent. A very painful comedy.
For adults and teenagers.

Friday fifties

Out among the vines behind our house is a line of acacia trees. In spring, the white flowers are fragrant and their petals carpet the ground as they fall. At this time of year, their seed pods fall and split open, exposing the little bean-like seeds.

One of hundreds of acacia seed pods on the vineyard road, 50mm, f/3.2, 1/125s, ISO 250.

Thursday was a chilly day. Our high temperature was around 5ºC (around 40ºF), but the lows were close to freezing. I spent the morning screwing little hooks into the rafter beams on the front side of the house. Then I strung up some holiday lights. Up until now, I've been wrapping the light string on the deck railing. But this year I decided to string the lights up along the roof line. I worry about teetering on ladders, but this wasn't too precarious a job and I survived to tell the tale. I'll try to take photos of it at some point.

Confusion on aisle six

It happens all the time. One day you walk into a grocery store you've been going to for years, and everything is changed around. Well, not everything, but enough stuff has been relocated to throw you off your rhythm. It happened yesterday. The shampoo, soap, and toothpaste aisle was not where it was supposed to be. One whole end of the store had its shelves turned perpendicular to the way they were before. I missed produce altogether.

The frosted end of a vineyard post.

I know there are good reasons for this kind of change. Well, one good reason. Marketing. Figuring out the shopping psyche and trying to place products where they will be noticed and bought. Forcing shoppers to walk down every aisle looking for their regular items in hopes that they will see something new and pick it up on an impulse. The whole place is engineered to get shoppers to fill up their carts. People are paid to study this. People are paid to determine which changes will work and which will not. People are paid to analyze shopping patterns before and after changes to maximize revenue. And we shoppers know they do it, and we adjust to it, and we happily pay them to do it again.

Drip drip drop

A minor weather system moved through on Tuesday, bringing us a little rain. Not much at all and with no wind, thankfully. I was able to get outdoors and do some minor cleaning up in the garden while it was still dry. Earlier in the fall I had set out concrete tiles under the winter squash to keep them off the ground. So, now that the squash are harvested, I wanted to gather up the tiles and put them away. And I pulled the remaining tuteurs (stakes) out of the ground and put them away as well.

These are dew drops, partially frozen, that I noticed on guide wires in the vineyard on a recent frosty morning.

There is still the rose pruning to do, but that will wait for a while. And I need to trim up the lavender and sage bushes at some point during the winter. Since my elbow has been hurt, I haven't done the hedges. The elbow is getting better, very slowly, so some time before the spring growth starts I will get those hedges trimmed. Not the tall ones, mind you. Just the low hedges that I can trim without a ladder.

Hipsters

Rose hips-ters, that is. There are still rose blossoms here and there in the neighborhood's gardens. But most of the rose bushes around us are covered in hips, especially the wild roses out along the edges of the woods that surround the vineyards. The hips pictured here are not wild roses, but garden-variety plants along one of our neighbors' fences.

Rose hips provide color in late fall and early winter.

Our roses, the few we have left, are no exception. I plan to cut them back once it gets colder, although I don't really know if it matters when I do it. I've read that it should be done before the sap starts running in spring. For us that means January or February. I've also read that it should be done when the plant stops flowering. For us that means any time now. And I've read that it depends on the variety of rose you're pruning. For us that means I have no idea.