What do these look like?

To me they look like cactus growing out of the scrub in some desert. In reality they're new pine cones growing on the fir tree outside the window of the den. The cones are less than two inches long and they won't get much bigger. When they fall they'll litter the ground and will have to be raked up.

Fresh pine cones growing on one of our trees.

I've made some more progress in the attic by painting the closet doors, hanging them, and removing more tape from the floor and beams. We've taken some rugs up in anticipation of moving furniture up there real soon. Ken moved his desk and computer up, too.

Today we're invited out for lunch in nearby Couffy. There will be dogs in attendance and Callie will have fun playing with friends. Mostly they'll just lie about after some getting-reacquainted sniffing. We should see the afternoon high near 26/27ºC (almost 80ºF).

Sunrise semester

Here's what our sunrise looked like on Friday morning. A perfectly clear sky and not a jet trail to be seen. The morning was chilly, but the day warmed up nicely.

Standing in the vineyard looking east toward our house at around 7:15 on Friday morning.

I'm enjoying these days that are giving me an opportunity to get back into the garden work. There is so much to do but it will get done when it gets done. We're still cleaning up after the construction and painting and are beginning to move furniture around. And there's still the winter wood to cut.

But I'm not stressing. I have wine.

A summery lunch

It's still summer and the weather is summery. At least the afternoons are. We're having a great streak of sunny, warm, and dry days. The vegetable garden is loving it. Squash are still coming in and we're eating fresh tomatoes daily. Ken made a great gratin with eggplant, tomatoes, and zucchini the other day. In fact, he made two. One goes into the freezer.

Home-grown sweet corn on the cob with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

And I've been harvesting corn. This is the second meal of corn on the cob that we've had so far, and there are more in our future. I'm very happy that the corn is successful and I'm encouraged to plant more next year. Corn on the cob is not a staple in France. Most of the corn grown here is feed corn. You can sometimes find sweet corn on the cob in specialty sections of the supermarkets, shucked and shrink-wrapped and very expensive.

Chicken breasts marinated in white wine, olive oil, and garden herbs, skewered and grilled.

I'm not sure how most of the French people we know would react to a cob of corn on their plates. They'd probably try to attack it with a knife and fork and be thoroughly amused to watch us Americans just pick it up and eat it. Vive la différence!

Burs in the fur

Callie came home from Wednesday's morning walk covered in burs. Covered. She had them on her legs, on her belly, in her tail, on her neck, and behind her ears. I spent ten minutes with her dog comb trying to get them all out before giving her the morning rinse-off.

See the little hooks? These are some of the more common burs that Callie picks up.

All it takes is one little detour through the right (or wrong) field or through the brambles and she picks them all up. She even found more burs later in the morning in our own back yard. I'm not certain where they are, but she found them.

This is not a new thing. I've been telling her since puppy-hood when she's got "a bur in her fur." She knows what that means and will stand still for me to get them out. Usually it's just a few, but this time of year, well, bounty. If only they were edible.

I also looked up "bur" in my Webster's Unabridged Dictionary to find out if it had one "r" or two. Apparently it can be spelled either way, but I got the impression that one "r" is more common.

Was that Miss Muffet I saw running in the vineyard?

Or was it August, high-tailing it out of here? Either way, September has arrived. I think the summer feels short this year because it started late and because we've been concentrating on the attic work and not much else. We still have three weeks of summer left and are hopeful that the weather will be good so we can continue harvesting our garden and preparing the yard for winter.

Another garden spider out in the vineyard. We've seen a lot of them this year.

By the time fall arrives, we should pretty much moved around and cleaned up. Then we can shift our labor to garden and yard, preparing it for winter. But it is all worth it to have the new space. There will be photos once we've moved some things. Right now there's nothing much to see except big expanses of white walls.

It's better than it is, wasn't it?

My back is much better these days. There are still some minor twinges now and then, just to remind me, but they are fewer and farther between than a week ago. I even skipped my anti-inflammatory drug on Sunday so that I could be awake at a garden party with no ill effects. I'm still being careful about moving my neck and head and I'm still wearing the neck brace most of the time, and especially to bed at night.

Part of the vineyard on a hazy August morning.

We're really getting close to finishing the painting. Ken's done a great job having taken over the painting of the large sloping ceiling and higher walls. I've been working on priming the closet doors which doesn't involve much moving around. They're primed now, so I'll fill in some holes with putty and wait for that to dry before putting the paint coat on. I've also been fiddling with hardware and have started the process of removing the painting tape from the floor.

We are anxious to be done. The next step after painting will be the clean up. The floor needs a good going over to remove the inevitable drops of paint (we used drop cloths, but you can't cover everything) and leftover dust and dirt. Ken wants to give the steps another coat of varnish.

Then we'll start moving the furniture up. There's a lot of moving to do because we are essentially re-arranging the entire house. But there's nothing really big or heavy to deal with and we'll be able to manage it pretty easily. Then the rest of the house needs a thorough cleaning as we put it all back together. We skipped spring cleaning this year because of the construction work, so now it's time to pay the piper.

After all that, there's the garage and utility room to put back in order. They've served as our storage and staging areas for construction and painting. It'll be nice to clear out and clean up before the weather turns cold. We'll also have the plumber back to hang the radiators in the new space sometime during all of this.

Thistle get ya

Late summer is thistle season and the vineyard is full of them. Sometimes I wonder how the grape vines manage with all the other things growing out there. But most of the things that aren't grapes grow on the margins or in the large fields that lay fallow in between vine parcels.

Thistles among the grape vines.

I think the vineyards, fields, and woods are at their most colorful this time of year. When summer's rainbows touch the ground, they leave behind green in the grasses and leaves, white in the wild carrot flowers, yellow in the little daisies, blue in the wild chicory, purple in the thistles, and orange in the giant slugs.

Then happy little bluebirds fly... oh, never mind.