Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all our USA friends and family!

Quai Jean-Jacques Delorme, Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher.

Once more, with scaffolding

Here's another shot of the abbey church in Saint-Amant-de-Boixe, taken as we headed back to the car and our next destination. I read in Wikipedia that the bell tower has been renovated extensively. By the looks of things, the rest of the church is getting its share as well.

Scaffolding on the abbey.

Our temperatures are getting more seasonable. We're expecting single digits (Celsius) for a couple of days. No frosts in sight, though. I had a fire in the wood stove all day yesterday. I expect I'll do the same for the next two days. I harvested another sucrine squash from the garden yesterday and roasted it. Some of it will go into a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, the rest will go into the freezer.

Am I blue?

I peeked inside the door of the abbey church at Saint-Amant-de-Boixe as we walked through the grounds. A woman was working on the stairs that descended from the door to the floor of the nave. I don't know what she was doing to them. Whatever it was, I couldn't use the steps, so I stayed put just long enough to snap a photo of the intensely blue choir and stained glass window.

The blue was so intense. My photo doesn't do it justice.

My visit to the dentist went reasonably well. He had trouble separating the temporary crown from the post in the implant. He pulled so hard that, for a moment, I thought he might rip the implant right out of my jaw. But then I heard him say, "There it is," and all was well. It's all back together now and it feels as though nothing happened. The permanent crown will be ready next week.

Le tympan

In English, it's the tympanum. I should have remembered this word from architecture school, but I've long forgotten and had to look it up. It's the triangular or semi-circular space over a door or window, framed by arches and a lintel, often adorned with sculpture. This is the tympan over the main entrance to the abbey church at Saint-Amant-de-Boixe.

The tympanum over the western entry to the abbey church at Saint-Amant-de-Boixe.

Today I go to the dentist (my regular dentist) to get measured for a permanent crown for the implant I got last summer. The dentist will remove the temporary crown and use a fancy camera to photograph and measure the space. Then he'll put the temporary back on while the permanent crown gets made. I have an appointment in ten days to have that put in.

So, the saga of my broken bicuspid (broken last spring) is coming to a happy end.

The abbey church

This is the bell tower on the abbey church in Saint-Amant-de-Boixe, seen from the street below. We parked the car and took a little walk around the abbey complex. Dogs are allowed on the grounds, but we didn't go into the church or cloister since we were on our way to another place. We did, however, take a short walk around the complex, but not far enough away to get more of it in a photo.

The imposing bell tower on the romanesque church of St.-Amant-de-Boixe.

The abbey was completed in the fifteenth century and has been, according to Wikipedia, extensively restored. In fact, the day we saw it, there was scaffolding over a portion of the church and adjoining buildings. Restoration and maintenance never end.

Saint-Amant-de-Boixe

The town of Saint-Amant-de-Boixe is about ten kilometers north from the house we rented back in October. The attraction there is a rather large benedictine abbey. But more about that later. This building is the town hall. It looks rather grand for a town of just over a thousand inhabitants.

Town hall in St.-Amant-de-Boixe. Adorned with purple umbrellas.

It finally happened. We had a sunny, still, and relatively warm day on Friday. I got my butt in gear and cleaned up the barbecue grill and covered it for the winter. What a greasy mess it was. And, to be honest, it still is, just less so.

Today I'm planning a quick trip to the market in St.-Aignan for some nems (Vietnamese egg rolls) from the Asian vendor. I hope he's there.

Volcanos

A couple of weeks ago, another vineyard parcel out back was dug up in preparation for replanting (I hope). I posted a photo of the big tractor they used to do the work when it was happening. It took two or three days to do the whole parcel. The grape vine trunks are now piled up and will likely be burned this fall or winter. Until then, they stand like volcano cones in the distance.

Grape vine volcanos. Canon 6D, f10, 1/1000, focal length 255mm.

There are eight of these "volcanos" out there. Only these three are visible from the guest room in our house. I used my telephoto lens for the shot, but didn't use the tripod, so there's still some blurriness from camera shake. It was also windy, so that would also cause some blur.