Another big meal, and more

On Sunday we lunched with Sally and Mike (English folk who were doing work on our house) in nearby Cherves-Châtelar at the bar-tabac-gas station-seed store-hardware store. It looks a most unpromising place for a meal. Other days, they serve a normal sort of prix fixe menu. But the owner really likes to cook, so on Sunday he serves a many-course meal of his choice, reservations required. We were served:

• An aperitif, this time kir, served from a pitcher.
• A very tasty puréed soup, leek and potato we thought, as much as you wanted.
• A starter plate with slices of fresh melon (which none of us have seen in the shops yet), a slice of foie gras, slices of smoked duck breast on toast, and a bit of watercress with a vinaigrette. You're just getting started now.
• A second starter plate of boiled shrimp and langoustine with a garlicky mayonnaise to accompany them. Wipe your fingers! No, that wasn't the fish course.
• Next came the fish course, a large slice of salmon fillet, perfectly cooked, in a creamy sauce, possibly sorrel. Are you still with us?
• Then meat course, large slices of veal, served with scalloped potatoes. Not full yet?
• Then there's the cheese course. Three kinds of cheese, blue, goat, and cow, all very nice. Still going?
• For dessert a big cream puff, covered with chocolate, topped with a walnut half, and filled with a walnut cream. Yum!
• And coffee and tea to end it all.

This was all accompanied by baskets of crispy, fresh bread, bottled water, and as much wine, red (bordeaux) and white (muscadet), as you could drink. All for €23 per person. We don't see how he makes any money on this, but we didn't complain. No dinner for us that night and only soup the next day. We can't do this too often, but it sure is nice!

The weather is being gorgeous. Today was over 20C (pushing 70F) and sunny. Nature's clothes dryer is back in business. The flip side is that nature's overflow refrigerator is not working at all, so we have to fit all the produce we buy, broth-in-progress, and other such things into the refrigerator. Here's a picture of the yard taken from the upstairs window:

Down the center is a curved path lined by daffodils. This is quite old now and not blooming as it used to do, but still fun to see. Under the "umbrella tree" on the left are more daffodils. The pink on the left is the first of three camellias in full bloom. The bit of pink on the right, just beyond the curly hazel is a flowering currant (no berries). The bit of red further down is laundry hanging to dry.

Last week we got a 1000-liter cistern to catch rain water from the gutters. Ed put it in place this morning:

It's sitting on concrete blocks now, and not yet connected to the downspout from the gutter on this side of the house. We'll use the stones that were there as part of the edging when we expand the flower bed around the umbrella tree. Just to the left are hydrangeas starting to leaf out. The cistern will be covered with the passion flower vine that's just around the corner, possibly helped with some added honeysuckle or clematis. On the other side of the house, we'll tuck in a 500-liter green-plastic rain barrel that will connect to the gutter on the other side of the house. We don't really think that 50% less water runs off on the other side, but that's all there's room there is.

We went to order our new wallpaper and discovered that it was in an end-of-season sale, marked 20% off. (Did we know that wallpaper has "seasons"?) We should have it by the end of the week. Now we have to figure out how we're going to reach the 315cm (10.33ft) ceiling to put it up properly.

This afternoon we heard, then saw, more cranes flying over. This evening we went out to see the international space station and the shuttle flying by. We knew they docked today and thought it had already happened, so we were surprised to see the two lights zooming overhead. They'll dock a couple of hours after we saw them. We waved, but doubt if they saw us.