Playing tourist

Fingers crossed, there appears to be some progress on Ed's Carte Vitale. A new attestation has arrived, one with Ed's name properly entered. We're hoping this means a corrected application for the Carte Vitale itself will follow soon.

Last week we went to Chauvigny to see the Les Géants du Ciel in the ruins of the Château des Evêques. This is a show of wild birds, the giants of the sky, displayed in an sort of amphitheater (pictured before it was full of visitors):

The theatre sits at the edge of a cliff between the ruins of two walls:

There were more birds than we've ever seen at this kind of show: falcons (unknown sorts, from the mideast), Harris hawks (from North America), several kinds of vultures and griffons, barn owls, a bald eagle (who snagged his chickie from a pool at the edge of the stage), storks, a caracara, and a zany seriema (who danced on tiptoe across the stage and leapt into the air for his or her treat). The show ended with a dramatic flight of two kinds of macaws and other birds of the parrot family. There were a number of handlers who moved among the crowd, flying the birds back and forth, all very impressive. Two of the vultures took advantage of the thermals on the warm day to disappear into the sky for a bit of a soar. We were not sure if this was actually part of the show, but the handlers did seem a bit consternated.

Then after a quiet weekend, on a day when the temperature topped out about 37C (98.6F) we visited the gardens at the chateau L'Abrègement near Bioussac. The family opens the gardens to the public for some days each year. In the great tempête of 1999, they lost 15,000 oak trees. These were cleared and sculptors invited to use the wood.

There are two of these "eggs," which are stacked, with nothing special holding them together:

This is a fascinating flat sculpture, which would be best viewed from within the chateua:

And an old yew:

We fear this is starting to read a bit like a tourist blog.

Around the house, Ed finished off the installation of the new window in the bathroom by adding tiles below the new window. He also added some decorative mosaic tiles to a small ledge by the stairs to the mezzanine. If we were a cat-free household, this would be a nice place to tuck a small knickknack or plant, but that won't work with Sophie around. The world is her plaything.

Sophie has discovered how to push her way out through one of the bedroom screens. We've block this now and hope she doesn't generalize this discovery to the other screens.