The details

Rick does some last minute rose pruning

When I ask myself each week "what is my blog subject going to be?" the answer generally comes easily. We often have some kind of an event, a visit, a project or an adventure, which makes it simple to choose a weekly theme. This week we had an outing planned, which would surely have been a worthy subject, but in the end, mostly due to a few days of unexpected rain, we cancelled our plans and stayed at home. While casting about for an alternative focus, it struck me that I could share with you some detail views of our life, the house, our environment. These close up images sustain me from day to day. I am a very visual person who can be stopped in her tracks by a shaft of sunlight, the colors of shadows, forms and textures that surround me. With that in mind, on a bright sunny day, I took my camera in hand and began pointing it here and there. These are the results.

Morning always begins with two cups of coffee, taken on the couch. Rick supplies the brew from his trusty old Italian espresso machine, la Contessa. The timing depends upon who else is in the house. The morning light is magical and changes dramatically with the season.

Do you notice shadows? Watching them is one of my favorite pastimes. Shadows are always good news. They mean the sun is shining!

 

Early spring sunlight bathes the couch where I take my coffee.

 

Passing the yellow room, I noticed a streak of light illuminating the bed. The sun is all of a sudden becoming so much stronger.

The front of the house faces east, so all the rooms on that side are sunlit in the morning. The dining room, since our redecoration of last fall, has become one of my favorite rooms.

I still like the shabby/chic Annie Sloan paint job. We have not exactly finished this room, as I haven't yet painted the baseboards. Notice I don't offer any photo of those here.

It has been noted that the walls are painted to look a lot like Wedgewood. I inherited an entire collection from my mother.

Old plates decorate the wall.

Spring flowers are on offer. It's either daffodils or tulips. Both seem to last very well in a vase of water kept refreshed.

When the sun shines in through the doors, which on warm days stay open, I am constantly delighted by the colors.

Sunlight on the sheers in the studio creates beautiful shadows.

Layers of doors.

Patio furniture with a winter patina, not yet scrubbed for the season.

Afternoon in the courtyard, the sun is on its way to the back side of the house.

On a drive into town, we had some dramatic cloud displays.

Winter hedges, not yet leafed out, but thinking hard about it.

La Ferté-Bernard is our closest large town, where we go once a week for groceries and other errands. It's a pretty old place built before the Middle Ages.

The rustic wooden carvings that decorate some of the buildings are very old.

The church is impressive. This was an important center in bygone days.

There is a kind of stone lettering, invented first by Leonardo de Vinci for François I, the king of France who was his patron at the end of his life. Our church here has one of the best examples in France of this technique.

Today I leave for a two week visit to California, where I haven't been for 7 years. My lovely family has sent me a ticket as a birthday present. The blog will therefore go silent for a short while, but when I return I'll have photos to share from a completely different part of the world.