Birches and fish soup

We have quite a few birch trees around the neighborhood. In fact, the name of our property on the town's maps is les Bouleaux (the Birches). This row of birches is on our neighbor's land across the road. At one time, the line of trees marked a property line. Twenty or thirty years ago (I think) Bernard bought the land next door, so he's owned it all for a while.

The sun rises in the southeast over our neighbor's yard.

There's not much new and exciting to report. As long the weather is relatively mild and dry, I get outside and do little things here and there, but nothing major. We're planning our meals for the holiday season based on what's on sale, seasonal specialties, and what's in our freezer. For example, we have some fish stock in the freezer and there's a sale on certain types of fish at the supermarket this week. I'm going to make a provençale specialty: soupe de poissons à la Marseillaise (fish soup). It's not bouillabaisse, but a thick, smooth soup served with a sauce called rouille (rust) made from garlic, olive oil, and hot chili peppers, and with toasted baguette slices and grated cheese. Yummy.

The browning of the vineyards

The leaves have all fallen from the grape vines now, even more so than in this photo, taken last week. Most of the leaves from the trees in our yard are also down and I got the driveway cleared of them yesterday. It won't take much to get the rest of them up now.

What once was a sea of green, then yellow and gold, is now brown.

The barbecue grill and the deck table and chairs have all been put away for the winter. Most of the potted plants are now indoors or under cold frames. I think we're ready for winter.

Believe it or not

There are still a few grape bunches out there. These are not wine grapes, I think, but grapes that are meant for eating. They grow on the side of the stone storage building in the vineyard and are not harvested, except by people who walk past and by wildlife.

One of the last of this season's grape bunches.

Most of the grapes on these vines are dried up or rotten, but this bunch escaped an early demise. Still, with the freezing temperatures we're having now, I'm sure it's not long for this world.

Propagating hydrangea: an experiment

For a while now, I've wanted to change the planting bed along the front of our house. At present, there are two small camellias and two old rose bushes. These plants have seen better days. I want to dig them out, fix the soil, and plant something new along the wall.

Five of eight new hydrangeas. I sure hope they survive.

I thought that hydrangeas would be nice. We have one on the north side of the house that does pretty well and I figure that putting a row of them along the front (which faces east) would be good. Instead of going to a nursery to buy plants, I wondered if I could make my own by propagating from the plant we have. Sounds like a job for the internet!

My research revealed that it is, indeed, possible to propagate hydrangeas from cuttings. I followed the instructions to cut short stems from new growth, to trim the leaves back a bit, and to plant the cuttings in a sterile medium (I used sterile potting soil). I didn't have any growth hormone to dip the stems in, so I skipped that step. Then the seed-pots with the cuttings went into a mini-greenhouse (actually a plastic box with a lid that some produce came in) and I set it in a well-lit location (but not in direct sunlight). I did this about three months ago and I watered the pots maybe twice since then.

You can see all eight plants here; three are on the floor to the right.

Last week I checked the cuttings by gently tugging on one. The internet said that, if roots had grown, the cutting would resist being pulled out of the soil. Success! So I gathered up some larger pots and transplanted each cutting into new soil. There were lots of roots visible on each cutting. So now they have room to grow more roots. I can even see new leaves budding out in the center of each cutting. If I'm lucky, I'll have eight new healthy hydrangeas to plant outdoors next spring.

There is still some color

Almost all of the grape vines have lost their leaves now. The vines are bare and brown and the growers have started the pruning process. That'll go on through the winter. I still see some yellow in the trees, but there's not a lot left. We're down to freezing again this morning and the cold certainly speeds things along.

Blackberry leaves turn yellow and brown.

We still have the maple leaves to rake up out front. Today might be a good day to get started on that. Or maybe tomorrow. After that, the tilleul (linden) tree will finish dropping its leaves and they will need to be gathered up, too. We'll spread the leaves over the garden plots for the winter to help keep weeds down. In the spring, they'll get tilled into the soil.

Ouch

The woods around us contain many kinds of trees. Oak, birch, and pines are the most common, I think. Here and there are stands of acacia* as well, particularly along the banks of the streams that drain the vineyards. Often, in the rows of vines adjacent to a stand of trees, seedlings will sprout in between the vine trunks where the mowers, plows, or even the herbicides don't reach.

Thorns protect a young acacia from something or other, maybe from browsing deer.

The saplings can grow as high as the vines themselves before the growers pull them out. This is one of the thorns on a young acacia that's grown up higher than its neighboring grapes. I'm sure it will be yanked out as the vines are pruned this winter.

*From what I can find on the internet, what grows here is false acacia, called black locust (robinia pseudoacacia) in the U.S.

The end of the road

The dirt road that runs from our house out through the vineyards ends at this intersection. Here, two more or less parallel paved roads head down toward the river. Behind me in this photo, one of the paved roads continues on out through the vines to meet another road that runs between Saint-Aignan and the town of Céré-la-Ronde to the west.

Looking roughly northeast. These roads head down into the river valley beyond. The speed limit to the right is 70 kph (about 40 mph).

This intersection is usually the turn-around point of my walks with Callie. But every once in a while we head out a little farther to her utter delight. Her favorite thing to do is to get off the roads and walk around the vineyard parcels, darting into and out of the woods all around.