It's a girl!

But we don't know her name yet. Our new Sheltie puppy was born on Februrary 23 (which is one day after Callie's birthday) and we'll bring her home around April 20. Now we have to come up with a name. The year 2017 is an "N" year for dogs, so the name (at least the official name) must begin with "N." We're looking for a name that works both in French and in English.

Isn't she cute? She'll be 4 weeks old on Thursday. Her nose will lengthen considerably in the coming weeks.

There were two puppies in the litter. One is a male, tan and white (sable) in color like a classic collie. The female, ours, is tricolor, meaning she is mostly black, with white and tan accents. She's a Shetland Sheepdog, so she will be about half the size of Callie when she's full grown. Her mother (whose name I've already forgotten) is a sable color, fauve in French. Her father is a tricolor.

This is the mother of our new pup.

The breeder's facility was nice, out in the countryside between Azay-le-Rideau and Chinon (both famous Loire Valley châteaux), a little over an hour's drive from here. There were many dogs on the property, and a good number of older puppies from previous litters, all bounding with energy. Ken took a bunch of photos, but the dogs were hopping around so much that most of them came out blurry. When we bring our new one home, she will already be "chipped" for identification (a microchip implant under her skin), like Callie is, vaccinated, and registered with the official French dog registry. Now we have to think about puppy stuff, like a collar and a harness (I may have a small one from when Collette was a puppy), bowls, chew toys, and a bed. Oh yeah, and a name!

Lilac buds

I'm so excited! This year is a flower year for our biennial lilac. I didn't know when I bought it that it was an every-other-year bloomer, but what can you do? So this year we will have flowers, and here are the buds!

You can see the fuzzy little purple flower buds emerging.

I'm really looking forward to spring right now. It's just that time of year and I'm ready. Soon I'll be planting seeds for the vegetable garden. The greenhouse will soon be earning its keep.

Beetlemania

It's not an incredible simulation. It's an actual beetle. We've had an invasion of beetles this past month. Only in the kitchen. These little versions of ladybugs are getting in somehow and are climbing the walls. And the curtains.

A very tiny beetle on the kitchen curtain, just above a spot that has been darned (but not by me).

This is the first time that we've seen so many little beetles so early in the year. It's hard to tell if they're hatching indoors or outdoors. We only see them in the kitchen, the rest of the house is spared.

Hawkish

I'm not very good at identifying birds. We have a few bird books, but there is so much variety that a casual sighting is difficult to compare to drawings and photographs, especially from memory. Even with a photo like this one, there isn't enough detail for me to be certain.

Any help in more accurately identifying this bird of prey is, as always, appreciated.

So, what is this? I would say that it's some variety of hawk or buzzard, maybe the common buzzard, buse variable in French, buteo buteo in Latin. Don't quote me on that. This one has been hanging out near the little pond behind our house, in the vineyard. It will circle and swoop, presumably hunting, or sit for a time on one of the posts, as it's doing here.

I was lucky that it perched for a good twenty minutes, long enough for me to get the camera and tripod, attach the telephoto lens, and frame the shot. I took it through a window from the house at a distance of a good 100 meters (about 325 feet). I cropped and adjusted the photo to highlight the bird a little better. When it finally took off, I was impressed by the wingspan, which was much bigger than I expected it to be. It's a pretty large bird!

Quarter moon

This is last month's moon. On a clear morning, also a "last month" phenomenon. It's funny that it's called a "quarter" moon. It doesn't look like a quarter. Quarters are round. Hehe.

Quarter moon in a ten cent town.

But seriously, folks, the moon that we see is a disk, one-half of the sphere that is the moon. We never see the whole moon. Ever. So what we see from here on Earth is half of the moon's visible surface lit up to varying degrees of fullness. The lit "half" that we see here is one quarter of the entire moon, so I suppose that could be where the terms "quarter moon" and "first quarter" come from (as well as "third quarter" and "last quarter"). But, according to Wikipedia, it's not: "the term 'quarter' refers to the extent of the moon's cycle around the Earth, not its shape." Clear?

But hey, you might be wondering, what the heck, then, is a "half moon?" Well, darned if it isn't the same thing as a quarter moon (unlike a half-dollar and a quarter-dollar, which are not the same at all). And when we see the full disk lit up, we call it a full moon, even though it's only half of the sphere that we're seeing. Got it?

A pile of tile

The artsy organized neighbor collects used terra cotta tiles. This one is square; it may be a roof tile but I'm not sure. The tile face is quite fancy and incorporates the name of the manufacturer in its design: la Grande Tuilerie Mécanique de Plagny-près-Nevers. I can't find out much about that place on the internet, so I think it may no longer exist.

Plagny is a community just south of the city of Nevers and is about a two-hour drive from Saint-Aignan.

Tuilerie is the word for tile manufactory. The Tuileries Gardens (and former palace) in Paris are built on the site of an old tile works. Tuiles mécaniques are a special kind of interlocking roof tiles. The tiles on our very own roof are mécaniques, but they don't look at all like this; they're big and rectangular and very dark brown, and probably about the same age as the house (50 years). I learned what they are called and how they work when we needed to have some roofing repairs done a number of years ago. There's nothing mechanical about the tiles; that word refers to the nineteenth century automation of the process for making them.

Take me to your leader

I noticed this the other day. It's in the garden of a neighboring house. It's a rusty kitchen strainer fastened to a stake with rope. I have no idea what it's for. Is it art? A pest trap? An alien listening post? Or does everyone except me have a rusty kitchen strainer fastened to a stake with rope in their garden?

I didn't notice any beeping or lights.

Yesterday I received a bizarre email from another neighbor requesting help, but without details. The message was strange, but plausible enough for me to reply with a generic "ok... what's up?" Turns out that our neighbor's email account had been hijacked and the perpetrator was fishing for money (a second message asked that I go out and buy four cash cards worth 250 euros each and transmit the codes to the scammer by email). I didn't reply again. Ken called the neighbor's husband to alert him, and he confirmed that someone else had told him they received the same message and that it was, indeed, a scam. I immediately changed my email password. I hope our neighbor can clear it up quickly; she's the mayor of our town.