Diversionary rambling is what this is

Several large swaths of San Diego County are being eaten by nowhere-close-to-contained wildfires right now, which is bad. The little house we live in is pretty far from them not as far as we'd like but we're probably okay for now. We have lots of friends who've been evacuated from their homes (or may be told to evacuate soon) so we're twitchy as all hell, as you'd imagine.

So what am I doing? Cheering myself up by posting vacation photos from our trip in May, that's what. Oh, and I also made brownies. And will probably make a bunch of jam in a little while. But right NOW I'm posting pictures.

So, to start we have this, a corridor at Fontevraud Abbey in Anjou, France.



Our friend Nathalie (who is an amazingly kind hostess) drove us all over ze place (note the French accent there), starting here.

Not only was the abbey run by nuns (not men) throughout the middle ages, but Eleanor* of Aquitaine, one of my all-time favorite historical figures,** spent the last bit of her very active life here. Her effigy is at Fontvraud, along with her husband's (Henry VIII, who may or may not have asked his knights to rid him of that pesky Thomas Becket) and her son's (Richard the Lionheart, AKA the guy that baaaadd King John tries to supplant until Robin Hood says "uh, no."). So there's a lot to like about Fontevraud.

What you can't see in the picture above is the swallows swooping in and out of their nests. And where, you ask, is there room for a nest in this spare stone corridor?

Here!



Those clever dive bombers of the avian world have appropriated the spaces in the ribbing of the Gothic arches for their own use. You know the groundskeepers must love that, right? I couldn't get a good photo of the swoopage at Fontvraud, but here's one from a tower at le Château de Chenonceau the next day. The dark little triangles are swallows.



And finally I give you this, a photo that has nothing at all to do with Fontvraud, swallows, mud, or even France. It's a random railing in Brugge, Belgium. Isn't it cooooool?



Yes, I thought you'd think so.

* Spelled, amusingly, "Aliénor" at the abbey

** And the inspiration for my name, along with L'il Miss Sensible in Sense and Sensibility and my great-grandmother's cat.