Closer to Home

Because today is the first day of the last month of the year - in this case 2012 - I am going to return a bit closer to home before completing the last memories of HWMBO's trip to the Orient earlier this year.  I know that I can not do justice to his travels.  But I have enjoyed living through them vicariously myself and selected photos are now in the ether for both of us to savor, without having to bring out DVDs of photos, etc.

Yesterday, in the hopes of stimulating some seasonal sentiment, I hopped a train to the other end of Lake Geneva to visit the Montreux Christmas Market, which opened last week on 23 November.  Of course, I had a wonderful time taking photos, sipping hot spiced wine, browsing at the stalls and generally just enjoying beautiful Montreux.  I specifically chose a Friday to avoid the weekend crowds.  That ploy was quite successful for me although those who have stalls at the market would probably prefer to have crowds every day because this is how they make their living.

I loaded the photos on my computer this afternoon to discover that I had also a few photos from late September when the vines in "my" vineyard still had leaves

 - and grapes.

Of course, the grapes have been harvested since then and the vines have lost their leaves.  The vines have now been pruned back for the winter and the erstwhile lovely green area is brown.  But here are some memories of what the vineyard looked like then.

At around the same time in September, digging, earth-moving and pavement breaking began across the road from this apartment complex in order to upgrade the existing sewage system and improve it for anticipated future construction in this area, as shown here.

While there has been a lot of noise in the neighborhood since then and the project will likely continue until the end of April 2013, it's a bit of a shame that the Dynamic Duo of Prince Tyger and Prince Lightning aren't on hand to witness it.  They adore any kind of big, loud and noisy machine.  Because this project has plenty of such,

the Princes would literally be glued to these activities like white on rice.