Between raindrops

Climate change is effecting the narrative on our little planet. Monster storms, odd-ball inversions; wherever you are, weather seems to be big news. This wasn't the case when I was young. Those were the days when you could predict the weather based on the date, and never be very far wrong. Not so now. Spring here has been very unsettled and the birds, plants and I are all a bit confused.

While in Moscow people are apparently turning on their air conditioners, over here the heat has gone back on and we're searching around for left over sticks of wood to build another fire. Significant downpours have kept me inside. Looking out from my studio window, it seems as if everything wants to bloom.

If I see a shaft of sunlight, I throw down whatever I'm working on and rush outside. Ah, for the glory of the sun on your cheek!

Our terrace garden is in form this year, despite the off and on weather. My favorite clematis has been blooming extravagantly for a couple of weeks and shows no sign of slowing down. The jasmine that shares the trellis will bloom later.

Even the yellow rose that climbs up the front of the house is covered in buds and is beginning to present itself.

I am really enjoying the terrace this year as everything has nicely filled in. I wanted to show you the full view, how it looks from our front gate, so I used Photoshop to put several separate photos into one panorama. It did a half-decent job,. Except for the distortion in the middle, this gives a fairly accurate representation. Be sure to click on the photo for a larger view.

Irises, temporary as they are, are among my favorite flowers. Outside my workshop this year is a lovely profusion of classic dark purple ones.

Lilacs are in their glory all over the village.

Our garden is in early spring mode; so much in bloom and yet so much left to emerge. The dahlias have not even poked the smallest leaf out as yet and the annuals - sweet peas, sunflowers and nasturtiums are barely starting. We haven't dared to put out our tomatoes yet. It's still just too inclement.

The wall around the far side of the garden is the ancient defensive rampart of the village and is quite thick, perhaps 8 feet. On top grow trees, shrubs, vines and these iris. All volunteers.

 

Our project this summer is to build a deck. For the moment it is a huge patch of weeds just beyond the little cherry tree.

My all-time favorite garden was one we visited in England many years ago, called Hadspen. It no longer exists but has remained the model garden in my mind. Nori and Sandra Pope created a garden based on color and it was truly breathtaking.

I tried to follow the basic principles when we put our own garden together. I certainly have neither the knowledge nor creativity, or the time that is required to really accomplish a garden like Hadspen, but with each succeeding year, the garden does look better and better.

The stand of white iris enlivens the garden at this time of year. I hate to watch them bloom out, but as they do the rest of the later bloomers, like the roses and penstemon begin to come alive.

This little beauty blooms early too and keeps the irises company.

I've lost track of some of those vigorous perennials. I've forgotten who they are, but each year they come back in force.

None of my beds are yet perfect. This one has gotten a little mixed up, but I love the light blue linen plants which this year are well-established.

This may not look like columbine; it doesn't to me, but it is. Maybe a mutant one, as it seems to have changed its form since last year.

Another pleasure of the spring garden are the daises in the grass. They remind me of being about eight years old. I always feel a compulsion to make chains.

Yesterday, while Rick did the work, I sat in my chair, enjoyed the sun in my eyes and dreamed of the summer garden.

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One positive result of so much rain is an electric green world to live in. This is the forest of Montmirail as we passed through it last week on our way to visit the family in Paris.

Rick built a nice desk/sewing table for Emily. It turned out beautifully well.

Emily has become a most excellent seamstress. Here Quinn proudly models the hoodie (lined in yummy white fleece) she made for him.

Zinnie is fully upright these days.

While Rick was building, Quinn and I made our own structure.

 

Quinn and his mother did some baking one afternoon. Here's his monster bread. Seems a shame to eat him, he's so cute.

Gardening At Last & Quinn's Big Adventure

March's blue and balmy days were followed by a month of almost constant rain. It was a good time to plant a lawn, which we did in our upper garden, but any other kind of gardening was out of the question. May arrived with variable weather, but just enough sun and warmth to make us long to put our hands in the dirt. Here they say that you really must "respect the Frost Saints," who are known to visit as late as May 15th. Planting tender plants, including tomatoes is tempting fate. In the past we have always found this admonition difficult to reckon and follow. This year it has proven justified.

Earlier in the week we jumped in the car and drove down the hill to visit our new favorite nurseryman, Carl. We passed fields of wheat and safflower beside rustic stone farm buildings. The day turned into a scorcher. We loaded our trunk with annuals to fill out our pots and headed back home for our first real day in the garden since spring sprang.

One advantage of all that rain was to turn our world green. As we drove past hedgerows, the extravagant verdant growth filled our view. I gave up trying to count the number of greens in the landscape.

Back at home we began in our front garden. Over a wickedly cold winter several of our jasmines died and so our fence is not quite as covered as before. You can peek through into the private terrace and entrance to the house.

Roses of three varieties climb up over a wooden trellis on the outside of the studio wall and Virginia Creeper covers the rest of the wall nicely. Iris, butterfly roses, herbs, anenomes fill in  the small border around the perimeter of the garden and violet campanula are beginning to tumble down the low walls. We filled our central planter with pansies for early spring. I wait to transplant it with lobelia and more cascading summer plants. Carl tells me it's still too early.

We invited two new trees to live in our terrace. They are different varieties of Japaneses maples. One likes the sun and the other prefers a lot of shade.The two sides of our space are completely different in the plants they can accommodate as the sun baths one half most of the day and visits the other half only briefly in the morning. It makes it impossible to have a geometric scheme so we've moved all the roses to the sunny side and bought some hostas and other shade lovers for the other. The trees will grow up eventually, hopefully providing, at last, that over-grown look I'm so very fond of.

The maple on the sunny side has the added bonus of bright red stems. It will give a little pizzazz during the long winter months.

The bigger garden project takes place at our plot of land on the other side of the castle, a five minute walk from the house. At the far end of the church is a road that leads uphill. Along the way are several "workman's gardens" as they're called. Our house sits in the middle of the village and while we have the lovely terrace and it's small garden in front, there is no land at the back. We own a very nice piece of land along the defensive walls of the city and just below the back walls of the castle.

Most of the gardens along the way are dedicated entirely to vegetables. Here you see Mr. Villette's garden. He spends most of his time here during the warm seasons. He is 87 this year and growing his rows of onions, potatoes, tomatoes and carrots keeps him fit and lively.

We are more interested in growing flowers and our garden is unique along garden row. We developed the geometric side a couple of years ago and each year it becomes better. Our compatriot, Catherine the librarian, the only other gardener along the road who favored flowers, has sold her garden to someone else and we watched as all the perennials were ripped out and replaced with neat rows of vegetables. We now stand alone. We get lots of comments and a few side glaces.

There are still a lot of holes to fill in yet. I like a garden that shows a minimum of dirt. Many of our plants have come back but in the dahlia bed, only one plant survived the winter. I will need to plant many more.

What is our new lawn used to be a large vegetable patch maintained by a neighbor. He has gotten his own garden now, so we were free to have our will with it. The lawn is in it's infancy, but will, once established, provide a place for football, badminton and a swing set for the kids. Our hedge has doubled in size since we planted it in March, but will not be mature for another year or two. Once full-grown it will provide complete privacy, as it reaches to 8-9' tall.

Our bank of white irises are glorious this time of year. I wish they would last all summer, but alas, their beauty is extremely transitory.

We planted these linen flowers last summer and they did absolutely nothing, so we were quite surprised at their profusion and charming blooms this year.

This is another plant that is giving us much pleasure this year, and quite unexpectedly as we don't even remember planting it and certainly it has never bloomed before. If you know the name of it, thank you for letting me know what it is!

Columbine reminds me so much of one of my dearest friends who died too young and too long ago. I think of him every time I see these little beauties, also so much more abundant in the garden than in years past.

If you're a snail, why not be this cute? Neither Rick nor I could bear to remove this little guy with his pretty yellow shell striped in elegant black.

We have spent many happy hours in the garden during the week. One thing that is really marvelous there are the lively birds. There is a rouge gorge (like a small robin) who comes and visits us, very curious to see what new things we are doing. There are lots of other birds swooping and gliding around. One very busy mother has her babies hidden in a hole in the defensive wall. She comes and goes feeding them. You can hear them peeping inside, but they are hidden from view.

***

This last week Quinn had his first camping experience. He is part of a class of three and four year olds at a wonderful bilingual school in Paris. Each year, including the very youngest tots, they have a spring field trip called "Classe Verte." The children spend three days and two nights with their class in Burgundy. We told some of our relatives in California that Quinn would be off with his teacher and classmates, horse-riding, hiking, nature walking and observing and all without his parents. Their response was "BUT THAT'S CRAZY!" It does seem, if nothing else, brave of the teachers to take it all on. Apparently, however, it turns out very well for all concerned and building self-confidence and independence in the children is one of the goals of the school. Quinn was so excited with his backpack and sleeping bag. He learned to groom the ponies

and took a ride through the countryside.

There were lots of animals at the center where the class went. He loves goats.

The children do seem happy and content and full of spirit in the photos taken by the teachers. I love the little girls with their wreathes, looking like woodland fairies.

Quinn seemed very grown up when he stepped off the train after his three days away from home. He was sun-baked, grubby and full of beans.

Spring Cleaning Inside and Out

These last weeks have swung between sun and rain, warm and cold. When the weather is fine, I feel like skipping and singing. Some days have been so glorious that we've flung doors and windows wide open. The temperatures soared up into the 70s (22º Celsius). I was born in the spring, so perhaps that is why it makes me feel so ALIVE when it comes. It's the promise of it all...one is buoyed by the anticipation, because in reality, other than very pregnant buds on the barren trees, rose and hydrangea sticks, not much is actually popping yet.

 

The Virginia Creeper has not yet awoken from its long sleep

 

 Wherefore art thou, spring?

The only exception to this barrenness is our Daphne plant, full of the most delicious smelling modest little flowers. This plant has spring spirit, blooming before anyone else and choosing fragrance over showiness. There are also those birds who are back in town and who wake us in the early morning with their singing outside the windows. The blackbirds may not be much to look at, but their powerful, melodious songs are brilliant. They too are in a kind of frenzy of anticipation as they poke through the bushes looking for just the right spot to build their nests. They arise before the first church bells, and twitter and chatter all through the day, and well into the the dusk.

A sunny window in the studio

Like them, we have been very busy and focused. Some of the many projects I have wanted to tackle are finally underway. Our hedge plants have just been delivered and planted. We chose photinia as they are hardy here throughout all weather conditions and grow very fast. On these warm days, they can grow a few inches a day, as their multiplying leaf clusters open up. Their foliage is green and red, rather showy. Of course, for now it doesn't look like much. With gardening one needs much more imagination and patience than I easily can muster. In a year or two, they will offer us complete privacy within our garden plot.

 You have to start somewhere.

Inside I have done a certain amount of reorganizing and refreshing. Switching rugs around, rearranging furniture, doing some deep cleaning, and most gratifying of all, repainting some trim. This will take me a very long time as there is so much of it in the house. I'm not sure I'll have it done before our season actually opens. When we moved here in 2007, we spent an entire year working on the place, adding bathrooms, redoing electricity and plumbing, reshaping some of the rooms to give each bedroom a private bathroom, which required building walls and adding doors to existing ones. In the process we repainted all the walls. That was one of my favorite activities, because the walls are plaster and to paint them, you simply mix a big bucket of chaux (limestone dust) with some water and throw in a little bit of natural powdered pigment. I still have jars of each of the available colors. You never know what you will get once you put the chaux on the walls. The color you see in your bucket has little relationship to what happens once it has dried on your wall. To put it on, you have a huge sponge, you wet down a small area and then you literally slap the chaux onto the damp wall with something about the size of a wallpaper brush. It's the sloppiest job in the world, which is just how I like it. It's hard not to get a beautiful color, as all the dyes are natural and the texture and modulation that are inherent in the material have their own charm. In the process, however, we left all the trim painted as the former owners left it, always meaning to get to that later. You know how that can go! So finally this week I was able to buy a can of paint (surprisingly difficult and outrageously expensive in this country for some reason) and beginning at the bottom floor I plan to slowly but surely cover up the old tired colors. One thing that has bothered me about the original trim is that the doors were painted one color and the baseboards another. When I'm done, it will be uniform.

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I have also been rather busy in the atelier. I'm getting ready for several exhibitions and creating some new images. I have been experimenting with a new technique of deep biting old etching plates on which I have painted bold varnished shapes. The acid eats away at the plate until there are frayed edges, holes and valleys. The protected parts are partially bitten away too, making new shapes and unexpected forms. I then print them as relief prints, not wiping them at all. Afterwards I hand color them with pastels. I like their boldness and they hold together as a series. I was very happy to find a framing shop in Le Mans that could cut mats and glass and put together custom frames while we waited. Rick then was able to frame them all. I like the black frames and white mats very much. It seems to match the graphic-like quality of the images.

I am reading The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino, a wonderfully magical tale of a twelve year old in the 18th century who got mad at his parents one day, climbed a tree and refused to ever come down again. It is beautifully written and highly recommended. Here he is meeting his neighbor Viola with whom he becomes instantly smitten. She is a malicious little thing, using her hunting horn to call to adults to come capture him.

I also have begun my zine. The story of Quinn and his nightmares. Here is the cover and one of the first pages.

 

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So much more to rush off and accomplish. We've at least put some pansies in our planter as we wait for the weather to improve. I long for various shades of lobelia tumbling down the sides. But that will have to wait for May!