Throwback Thursday

Here's another one with Collette, from the late '90s/early 00's. We're on the pier at Aquatic Park in San Francisco. In the background toward the left is the Hyde Street pier. If you really look closely above and to the right of my head, you might see the Hyde Street cable car terminal which is just across the street from the Buena Vista Café where, according to legend, Irish coffee was first served in the US.

Collette looks toward the Golden Gate Bridge while I contemplate the city skyline.

Rising in the background are a few of downtown San Francisco's iconic buildings, silhouetted in the haze. On the left, the Transamerica Pyramid is easily identifiable. Just to its right is the twin-spired 345 California Center, whose upper floors now house the Loews Regency San Francisco Hotel. The imposing dark granite tower of the Bank of America building rises toward the center of the photo. On the right is a Russian Hill residential tower. The Transamerica and BofA towers are no longer occupied by their eponymous corporations.

Gray and dreary days

That's late fall and early winter here. We only have about eight and a half hours of daylight right now, and the skies are often foggy, overcast, and leaden. We do get some nice sunny days here and there, but a lot of the time it's gray.

The walnut tree out on the vineyard road. I noticed that there weren't many walnuts out there this year.

I'm certain that these dreary winter days are the origin of our holiday traditions of bringing greenery and lights into our houses. And also of cooking meals with summer fruits, squashes, and root vegetables that were put in cold storage at the end of summer. And also of eating birds, like turkeys, chickens, guinea fowl, pheasants, partridges and other game birds that abound this time of year. All those things lift our spirits, and "help to make the season bright."

Tasha Tuesday

I've done this before, but now I've updated it with Tasha's photo. These are the four dogs that I've had in my life. So far. First there was Lassie. She was a purebred rough collie, the biggest of the four. My dad brought her home when she was just weaned, and this photo was taken not long after that. It was the mid '60s. It's one of the few photos I have of her. Lassie was our family dog until 1977.

Left to right: Lassie, Collette, Callie, and Tasha. Female sheepdogs, all.

The second dog was Collette. Ken and I adopted her in 1992 when we lived in the Silicon Valley city of Sunnyvale. Collette was a mixed breed, but obviously had a lot of Shetland Sheepdog in her. In 1995, the three of us moved back to San Francisco and then to France in 2003. She was with us for fourteen years. We think of her often and miss having her around.

The third dog was Callie, as many of you know, a purebred border collie born in 2007 here in France. She was the second largest dog of the four. Unfortunately, she left us this past summer at just ten years old. We miss her a great deal.

And now, of course, there's Tasha (full name: Natasha of the Wolves of Isengard). She's a Shetland Sheepdog, purebred. She was born earlier this year and is now over nine months old. Tasha is the smallest of the four dogs. We're looking forward to growing old with her.

Stacked

There is a restaurant on the island at Saint-Aignan and they have a nice outdoor seating area on the river with a grand view of the château on the other side. It's a great place to eat in good weather, but it doesn't get much use this time of year.

The indoor dining room is up on the bridge level, the outdoor seating is below that on the river level. The door in this photo leads to the kitchen.

The restaurant has gone through several iterations over recent years. I think it just started out as a bar/café. It has changed hands a few times and the kitchen was submerged when the river flooded a couple of years ago. But it keeps coming back. We enjoyed hamburgers for lunch with friends there one sunny summer day. Tasty!

Church and castle

Here's another view of the church and château at Saint-Aignan seen from the island in the Cher River. The leaves on those plane trees are long gone; I took the photo nearly a month ago now.

Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, November 2017.

We're having a blast of winter, even though the snow we got on Friday didn't stick around very long. It's cold outside, but not arctic cold. Soon the north wind will shift back into the west and our temperate climate will even things out a little. If the weather gets good enough, I might be inspired to go into town to take some pictures of the holiday lights they string up over the main streets. I haven't done that in a few years.

Snow

"Now the first of December was covered with snow." So sang James Taylor back in 1970. Was it that long ago? We had a predicted, yet still unexpected, snow event on Friday, the first of December. Forty-seven years later.

Ken took some movies. I took a few stills out the back window.

The snow was falling heavy, but it was not really threatening. It couldn't stick to the ground as the ground is not yet cold enough to carry snow. But the squalls were impressive nonetheless. We were out driving around when it started. It felt rather wintry. I wonder if we'll have more this winter?

Garden gate

I like this gate that opens onto one of the garden allotments on the island at Saint-Aignan. Not as a gate, but as art. There's no accounting for taste, right? I wonder how well it works. Our own garden gate is in pretty bad shape (it's wooden), but it still opens and closes.

Held together with chewing gum and bailing wire?

So here we are in December already. The weather is consistent with the season right now. This morning it's down to freezing and the weather people keep talking about snow, but I'll be surprised if we see any where we are (oops, I was wrong, we had a few flurries). The mountain people are all excited because they're gearing up for ski season, and good for them. We do have to watch for verglas (black ice) on the roads this time of year.

Oops, I was really wrong. Serious snow squalls this morning. Bad visibility on the road. The ground's too warm for any real accumulation, though. Still, it's pretty!