Start the day in kindness

January view from our walled garden

 

2014 has begun with a burst of energy. Days have flown by, leaving the holidays a pleasant but receding memory. I have been working very hard in the atelier and have only just come up for a little air and a tardy visit to my blog.

I did think of you when I heard a wonderful poem on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac podcast:

 

Why I Wake Early

by Mary Oliver

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety—

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light—
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness. 

The entryway in morning light

 Winter light is magical at the Maison Conti. Sitting high above the countryside, I look out our front windows to glorious sunrises every morning and from the back to magnificent sunsets at the end of these shorter days. In between, the low angle of the sun bathes the house in golden light, reflecting off mirrors, illuminating objects and casting wonderful shadows.

Main staircase to the ground floor

Of course, winter time is much quieter in our business, though it must be said, not completely dead. Still, we do have days of long lazy mornings, languid afternoons and cozy nights by the fireplace.

Rick at breakfast in a sunny window / mirror collection

So far, this winter has been extremely mild. No polar vortex here. We anticipate a bit more cold to come (last year it was colder at Easter than at Christmas), but even so, when the sun comes out, which it does surprisingly often, the house stays comfortable.

Stairway to our apartment

We have spent more than two solid weeks, working from morning to evening, repainting and reorganizing the atelier. It took much longer than I could have anticipated, but I am very pleased with the results and it is certainly clean from top to bottom. It is a very pleasant place to work.

Old yellow walls are now white. Much better!

We actually have lots more to accomplished before the job is entirely done, as we have not yet started work in the press room or the acid room, and Rick still intends to build me some shelves for the studio. I thought this would be just one of several redecorating jobs for the season, but it may turn out to be the only one.

Organized and ready for a happy new year

These mild days beg for walks to the garden and around the town. Winters like this one offer many delights. 

The road to our garden

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I wanted to let you know that Michael and Victoria Copeland will be offering two watercolor workshops at the Maison Conti in September/October 2014. The first session is already full, but there is still space for the second one.

Detailed information can be found on their website

Be sure to visit their website for more information or to sign up for this course. We are really looking forward to hosting the Copeland's and their students! Visit: sketchbook tours

Michael is a talented semi-abstract painter, represented in the U.S. by several galleries, but the course will focus on more realistic landscape watercolor painting. As you can see from his work, he has lots of color-singing techniques to teach you!

Images by Michael Copeland

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I hope the new year is looking promising to you. Please come visit again. Next time I will report on our extended visit to wintery Paris.

Berries on the wrought iron fence of the Chateau

Week 41: Here Comes the Sun

On bright days a shaft of pure golden sun lights the entry and never fails to enchant me

We had glorious sunny days all week long, even if the temperature wasn't exactly balmy (high 40ºs). In the afternoon the sun goes around to the back of the house and I find myself following it. Sitting in a little patch of light is one way to rejuvenate the spirits.

The sun at mid afternoon lights the stairwell making the colors glow

 

The foyer of the Rose Room is like a solarium in the early afternoon.

Rick caught me sunbathing in the Green Room window late in the afternoon

Another sign of the changing season is strawberries available at the grocery store. These are from Spain and are almost the size of a tangerine. They remind me of the ones we get in California. Frankly, even if they are quite red and attractive, they are rather tasteless. The best strawberries are small, misshapen and less colored. Natural is always best and someone has definitely been messing around with this variety. Don't the producers know, you don't taste with your eyes?

 

strawberries and tangerines from Spain and Morocco.

Farid left for Barcelona mid-week and doesn't arrive back until tomorrow. He reports that it was raining there. How strange. We were in Barcelona a year ago to the day. I'm glad Farid could have the opportunity to see this beautiful city. He even attended a basketball game. Certainly the night life there is bound to be a bit more stimulating than in Montmirail.

I worked like a mad woman all week in the studio. At least eight hours a day with only a short lunch break. I am trying to finish some work to submit to several shows coming up in the spring. I am not quite ready to share them yet.

On Saturday I came down with a strong case of cabin fever and simply had to get out into the sunshine. We decided to take a walk in the woods since the paths had had all week to dry. It's been a few months since I ventured down there and I wanted to see what signs of spring were showing themselves. I know I've taken you on this walk before, but never when the trees are still bare. It's a totally different experience this time of year.

On the way we passed by the presbytery, where the village priest used to live before he got too old to be left on his own. The garden is looking neglected. The house is at the corner by the bar and used to be the community salt storehouse in the middle ages. In those days salt was a real luxury item and the main means of preserving foods.

The village presbytery

The forest is below the lowest level of the town. One descends a path I call the rabbit hole, because the branches of the trees bend down on the one side while the hedges on the other reach up, creating a tunnel of foliage. It feels like entering into a fairy tale,

Entering the forest

Leaves litter the ground and the sun gains entry to the path through the tree branches. Rick wasn't sure he wanted to walk in the woods because he likes to keep to the sunny side this time of year. But we found the sun was not hidden at all.

The path we follow was constructed at least 600 years ago.

the path down to the forest floor

I love how the banks curve up on both sides. The forest is almost womb-like.

along the path

There are very few evergreens in the forest, so this time of year everything is so much more open.

one of our few pine trees

One can see the farm houses below the pathway.

looking toward Melleray, the town at the foot of the hill

We found a place on the path where we could look back up at the village and castle. In summer this view is completely obscured.

The castle of Montmirail

A  couple of wild flower varieties have begun to appear on the forest floor. My favorites are the little violets. We found them in small clumps all along the path.

 violets

These yellow ones are quite common in our part of France. I haven't been able to identify them.

perky and hardy yellow flowers which bloom into fall

Along the way we saw some happy cows. They had just been fed their hay by Farmer John.

contented cows

We have many beautiful horses in our area as well. It almost looks like Virginia to me.

happy horse

While walking I experienced one of those perfect moments. The kind of moment where everything make sense and all life seems good. All my senses contributed to that feeling, so I can't entirely share it with you, I can only try to describe it, however inadequately. There was the sun on my cheeks, the wind ruffling my hair, the smell of a wood fire, as one of the farmers was burning his slash, four different bird songs ringing through the trees making a kind of symphony as we gazed out upon the peaceful landscape. I melted into the moment, the place, and forgot myself entirely. Always a blessed relief!

The trees cast golden shadows on the pathway. Does it make you want to paint a picture?

shadows along the way

 

here comes the sun

Week 32: Happy New Year

A beautiful winter day in Montmirail! Happy 2011.

If the year ahead portends its themes on New Year's eve and New Year's day, then we can look forward to a year of very hard work and lots of sunshine.

Last year was the first time someone requested Maison Conti to host a New Year's eve dinner party. I was happy to oblige, as frankly new year's eve has never been one of my favorite holidays. I'd just as soon be putting on a party as attending one. A participant from last year's party contacted us again this year. Wayne and his wife Katherine are Canadian but have lived in Paris for seventeen years. Wayne works for the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and wanted to organize a feast for a group of his co-workers. He proposed a menu for us to prepare. It was much more complicated than last year's, including six courses and several choices (two entrées, two main courses, two desserts) Plus homemade rolls. We were full-steam ahead all day long making the various dishes.

Our guests were international, French, Italian, French Canadian, English Canadian, Irish, English and Thai. The party went off well. Many bottles of champagne and wine were killed and the festivities went on into the wee hours of the morning. A few arrived at breakfast with swollen heads, but after a few cups of coffee and some orange juice, all seemed to recover. Jonathan the Brit told us a groaner of a joke:

Why does a Frenchman only have one egg for breakfast?

Because one egg's an œuf.

***

This year brings an exciting new project for our family. My daughter Emily, who is creative from head to toe, invited her brother James and me to participate in an idea she had cooked up. She wanted to launch a web site where we could share creations. The idea was that we would choose a monthly theme and take turns posting our response to that theme. We could post prose, poetry, art, videos, recipes, quotes, photography, and anything else that strikes our fancy. It gives us the opportunity to collaborate and share ideas.

We have been working for many weeks to put together our new web site. We joined Squarespace and learned how to build a very nice site with all the widgets we could ever dream of. We will continue to add more functionality as time goes along. We searched for a name and finally came up with a line from the poem Horse Fiddle by Carl Sandburg, one of Emily's favorites:

FIRST I would like to write for you a poem to be shouted in the teeth of a strong wind...

We call our site To Be Shouted. I hope you will come by and visit us. We also invite you to be a guest collaborator, if you have anything you'd like to share around our themes:

January: Home

February: Maps

March: Sunday

April: Green

May: Birds of a Feather

June: Bread

July: Capture

August: River

September: Kitchen

October: Branch

November: Soft Spot

December: Tomorrow

James has inaugurated the site and will be posting various entries during the coming week. I will take over next week and Emily on the third. And how about you? Do you have anything to share on the fourth week?

 

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I was overjoyed to see the sun come out this weekend. Clients gone, dishes washed, beds stripped, and our calendar clear, we had the chance to get out into the countryside for a brisk walkabout. It was chilly, but with blue skies it didn't seem to matter. Even in winter it is very beautiful in the village.

It was quiet in town, not many people were out and about, although we did see Guy with his baguette under his arm, and Patrice leaning out of his window, as he often does.

Bonne Année!

Meilleurs Voeux!

Pour tout l'année!

The guardians of the castle were at home but not at work on the grounds. They stayed inside by the fire in their cozy bungalow.

 Down by the bus stop one can look up and see all the layers of the village. The road spirals around like a snail's shell.

There  are several grand stone houses throughout the village, built during different centuries.

 Some have incorporated parts of the old defensive walls into their facades.

 The winter sun cast its long shadows and we tried to stay within its rays.

***

I have made my resolutions; the usual ones. I also like to use the impetus of the new year to reorganize. I have devised a new system for storing my plates and prints, making it much easier to find them. I have been working on labeling and packaging my cards and tags and designing a few new objects for the boutique when it reopens in the spring. I have come to love the winter months when days are very free and quiet.

***

I am happy to have green hills to look out upon again. I do not miss the snow, although Mme Guedet, the baker's wife, says it comes again this week. Goggle disagrees. We'll see who is more reliable.

***

Quinn turns two at the end of this month. He got a haircut while he was in Belgium visiting his other grandmother. He looks like such a boy now. He used to call himself "baby" but now when he points to himself he says "boy."

"How big is Quinn?" we ask.

"So big!" he replies:

Week 27: A Week of Extremes

 

the studio window

The week began with sun and bright skies. It was a welcome change after days of gray. The angle of light accentuated colors and cast intense, interesting shadows. It was a great pleasure to work in the studio in the morning, and an even greater pleasure to walk around the village. We rested for several minutes with our backs against the toasty castle wall and let the sun bathe our faces in delicious warmth.

The church had its doors painted last summer, so they are fresh and vivid, especially against the crystal blue of the sky. The little stooped woman who arranges flowers each morning drives her Deux Chevaux from the bottom of the village. It looks good parked in front.

 

The church of Montmirail, just outside our gates

In our terrace the sun played upon the walls, and the last valiant rose opened in the light.

The Virginia creeper has lost all its bright red leaves by now

 

A white tree rose in the terrace garden doesn't seem to know it's winter

The bones of the lime trees show up starkly against the winter sky.  Gilles will arrive in January and prune them back to their knobby stubs, but first he will festoon them with Christmas lights.

One of the four lime trees on the Place de l'Eglise

After a very pleasant reminder of September and October days, the sky clouded over, hinting that the weather was about to change.

 

Clouds roll in

And change it has! We woke up mid-week to find our view obscured and to discover that the first snow had fallen overnight. The castle grounds out the back window look magical.

The castle grounds

Our morning view

In watching the evening news, I see the long S curve that represents the jet stream, so I'm aware that most of Europe and even corners of North American are experiencing this dramatic plunge in temperatures. In Scotland it is minus 14° and one of the coldest Novembers on record. Apparently we can expect the cold to continue for a few weeks. It's a bit early to be this chilly! In our big house, especially when we have so few clients, we can't keep everything warm and toasty, so we have our comfortable zones, (the studio, the bedroom, the office) which we hustle between. In some parts of England people are receiving an emergency subsidy to cover extra fuel costs. Alas, that is not the case over here, so we keep the fires burning and the furnace low.

We always have a book we are reading aloud to each other, and currently it is The Eternal Frontier, by Tim Flannery, subtitled An Ecological History of North America and its Peoples. It starts out with a fascinating and graphic description of the meteorite that plowed into the earth 65 million years ago, creating the Gulf of Mexico and causing the extinction of not only the dinosaurs but of many other life forms, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, in the protracted winter that ensued. Since then, the continents have floated here and there and the temperatures have varied crazily. Did you know that once upon a time, just a few million years ago, North America was a lot like the Serengeti of Africa, with elephants, rhinos, hippos and other such creatures roaming the savannah? The point is, of course, that the climate does change on earth and natural events do occur which can have profound effects on life. Man, however, never before had the power to influence these events. Thomas Friedman likes to call it "Global Weirding," rather than "Global Warming," since the climate change we're causing does more than just warm up the planet, it sends unexpected storms and extremes of every kind. Each year I feel I note the effects more and more profoundly.

Next week we travel to London to visit James and celebrate a belated Thanksgiving. I will have  photos to share and adventures to relate if the Eurostar doesn't break down in the cold, as it did last year. However, I won't be back before the beginning of next week, so my post will be a day or two late. See you then!

Beautiful but frigid