No More Winter!

Just when we think winter has lost its icy grip, it comes back in a sneak attack.

There's nothing sneaky about the snow and sleet we are due to get tomorrow, though. We are prepared for it. Meanwhile, I've been stocking up on spring jackets in pinks and yellows and scarfs in flighty floral patterns.

I crave spring.

The photo above is deceiving. It was late September near Montcuq, when we took a detour and ended up on a little road along the causses. This charming scene, a bit out of focus, captured me.

I hope you like it.

Spring

Spring has arrived earlier than last year here in Wisconsin, but later than the year before and the year before that.

Nonetheless, we are grateful that most of the snow is gone, thanks to a run of 45-to-60 degree days and a fair amount of sunshine. I love the washed-with-sunlight look of late March and early April. But the landscape is still gray and tan and colorless, as the rains have not yet turned the lawns to green and there are still patches of blackened snow along the curbs and in low shady places behind the horse barn.

I cannot help but recall that six months ago, I was languishing by the side of a pool in the southwest of France, sipping Malbec and breathing deeply of the country air, midway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The wind rumbles low along the causses and ripples through the fir trees and through the rows of vines in the vineyards.

The photo above was taken that very day on the terrace of the house we rented, known here as Chez Bateau.

A Sunday in France is a day to be celebrated.

So is a Sunday in spring. How will you celebrate?

Dom Perignon for Hard Times?

Although wine and scotch are fairly routine at our house, we are by no means heavy or even moderate drinkers. One or two meals a week might be accompanied by wine; tipples of scotch or some other mood-altering libation are relegated to the end of Bad Days.

As I have noted here before, I was given watered down wine as a child and taught that one glass per meal was enough. This was coming from Grandma Annie, whose mother (known here and in the family as Mémere) made her own wine. I've marveled at that, and wondered what kind she made. When I was a child, our neighbors asked if the could pick our dandelions and then a while later presented us with a bottle of dandelion wine, which as I recall was not bad. But what did I know as a kid?

Recently a friend gave me a bottle of homemade strawberry wine, which I am told is extremely potent. Save that for a Really Bad Day.

(I have never considered brewing my own anything. I was shocked recently to learn from my mother than Grandma Annie and a friend once hatched a plan to make bathtub gin in a washing machine. No one can recall if the gin ever got made. The best laid plans...).

I do enjoy buying wine, and even vodka once in a while. It's especially satisfying to purchase a bottle at a good price by auction, and that's how I came by the bottle of Dom Perignon and the two bottles of Champagne that grace my larder.

I'm saving them for a Really Good Day. You could argue, I suppose, that I have recently missed any number of Big Events, including the winter holidays and Valentines Day and before that, Election Day, and maybe even Inauguration Day.

But none of those events felt The Time to Open the Dom. I've been feeling a little guilty about having it in my possession.

What to do?

Should I hoard it a while longer or pop it open?

I'm thinking maybe Easter...