Samedi 13 février 2010

20h au Coin Perdu à Ligny le Ribault

Venez en Ange ou en Démon écouter les poésies angéliques et les contes diaboliques de Diane et Jean-claude tout en savourant un festin aphrodisiaque!

Menu 25 euros

 Kir Valentin Oeuf poché “red & black”

Poulet au miel et gingembre Riz safrané

 Saladade d’endives aux noix

Olivet proivré

Tarte au chocolat noir

 1/4 vin Café ou Thé

 Soirée organisée par Kristi Anderson et l’Association Caméléon

www.TheAmericanFrog.com TheAmericanFrog@aol.com www.cameleon45.fr

Kristi Anderson is the orignal owner of Tea & Tattered Pages and now runs a bed and breakfast in Sologne, Loire Valley, near Orléans.

le saint jacques le coin perdu

15, place de l’église

45240 Ligny le Ribault

TheAmericanFrog@aol.com

With winter at its worst in January and February, I find myself thinking of and longing for Coin Perdu more often than is good for me. Winters in Touraine are very grey, dark and sombre. On the odd weekend,  when  taking the drive to Coin Perdu to check that everything is still in order, we arrive at Puy d’Arnac in bright sunlight. Cold, but bright. Misty in the early morning,turing brighter during the day.  Maybe it won’t be too many years, or perhaps even months more before I can wake up on  cold January mornings with sun streaking over my bedroom floor at Coin Perdu.

I love Montlouis and our house  here by the Loire. I love our beautiful town of Tours, a mini Paris with it’s incredible architecture. I love the Loire with its wild unpredictability.

…la loire et ses oiseaux..

But the depth of my love lies at Coin Perdu, where the sunsets and clear stars  keep me outdoors early until late… Where I love the roaming cattle with their undisturbed manner, the bells clinging even somewhere at night. Where I love the buses roaming the skies, where I love listening to the the complaints of the owls in the dark of night, crying their dissatisfaction with us taking their barn…I’ve said all these things before. I will say it many more times. They are important things in my life;  the simplicity and honesty of the country side, where life isn’t always easy, but where the  comfort lies in knowing and acknowledging it. There aren’t short cuts in honesty, no shifting of boundaries. There is no playing around with honesty. Taking on a day can’t be played around with…animals can’t wait for their food, hay will be wet tomorrow if not cut today, the birth of a new calf cares not for convenience,  rain boots wait by the door for a good reason…nature dictates and man dances. It gives life its equilibrium. Keeps man humble, with his ear to the ground, his instinct awake. It keeps him alive. It gives him life.

So,  while I am waiting for March and spring to break through so we can pack and take off to Coin Perdu for the spring and summer months to resume working and restoring our mountain home, I have last year’s photos and many memories to keep me going these next two months.

But still, I can’t wait to…

…start working…

…fiddle in our barn kitchen…

…delighting in simple, delicious food…

…go for long walks…

…revel in rediscovering nature and animal life…

…paint, paint and paint…

…enjoying evening barbeques…

…enjoying breath taking sunsets…

Next year is 2010. It arived too quick. Life is fast. Sometimes too impersonal. Sometimes too evolved. But we’re here. Living it.

…1930…

…2009…

…then…

…now…

…hand written…

…elctronically animated…

An entry for Sundaystills.

Few things are as satisfactoryas filming or photographing animals. So rewarding.

These two cats run their kingdom with a firm hand. They took us into their kingdom a few years back when they were still tiny kittens and today we still serve them happily…

…two kittens sleeping together…

…Tokala discovering a garden…

…ayiani joining in the dicovery…

…tokala’s first snow…

…ayiani’s amazed by her first snow…

…another year in the garden for tokala…

…another year in the garden for ayiani…

…tokala now getting used to snow…

…ayiani now used to snow…

…another year, another photo…

…photos again!…

…my year at coin Perdu…

…and mine…

…a great life in summer 2009…

…oh yes, i agree – bliss!…

An entry for Sundaystills.

The wine harvest in France happens in October. Fall. L’automne. I present some images here from two weeks ago when we had a day of harvesting grapes/vendange in the biological vineyards of friends, where picking is still done by hand.  A family/friends day, where all family and friends started the Saturday off early morning with coffee and croissants, picking with vigour, enjoying a big lunch, restarting with heavy limbs, but still enough energy to engage in grape fights, and ending the day sticky, dead tired, but content and with fun memories. Until next autumn.

…early morning start…

…fit as a fiddle…

…empty the buckets…

…into the remorque…

…piling up…

…picking some more…

…soon to be…

…wine…

…afternoon picking…

…taking a break…

..going home…

An entry for Sundaystills.

I am joining Hartman on a trip to Hawa’i, leaving tomorrow morning. Except for the looong flight, I’m looking forward to it. I am bit tired…could it be that summer was too much fun?

Apart from being tired and fatigued , I’m in a creative slump. I haven’t done much creative- wise so I hope to revive some energy in Hawai…will be dragging along both sketchtools and camera tools…anyone volunterring to be caddy?

The packing and cleaning up and dinner are awaiting me, so I’m leaving you with a sketch. Until October: Stay well, keep creating and make the most of the season you’re in!

…trying to get to Hawa’i…

Some vintage models still frequently in use for everyday living, especially in the country side. Although, the Citroën 2CV is now quickly becoming “trendy” with the status conscious, middle aged section of the population. Could it be midlife crisis?

…cuteness with an enjin…

…pedal the enjin…

An entry for sundaystills.

August gave way to the celebration of a second birthdya here at Coin Perdu. This time round, we only took a break in between work for early morning croissants and coffee, a gift, a song and continued later the evening with a meal around the fire…where else!

…starting off the day…

The day started off like any other ay the last few months…old clothes, gloves, work and sweat. But no, nowhere on the chantier(construction site)  was I to be seen. After all, I was birthday girl! So for this dayI roamed about in pretty clothes(to be simply translated as clean clothes !)

…brunch…

And for early morning coffee break, we sat in the shade of the walnut tree. Took of the gloves and feasted on croissants and tarte peches.

…froth on a cup…

Gifts were unwrapped…no boughs and pretty paper this year though! In the spirit of the working year, they came clothed in newspaper and wrappings from the brocantes where they were bought. I giggled at the gifts, clearly seeing the attention that was paid to my comments on our stroll at the brocantes.

…olde worlde…

And last, but not least. An end to another birthday here at Coin Perdu. A special day with all my loved ones close to me.

…santé!..

In English called a firebug and in French very appropiately called gendarme. The young nymphs don’t have their wings devloped yet, which gives them that difference in appearance(smaller bug top left in photo).

firebug(Pyrrhocoris apterus)

nikon D70 camera with AF micro Nikkor lens 60 mm

An entry for Macromonday

The bells still ring  at the church in the little hamlet of Nonards, echoing across our valley, just to be anwered by the bells of Marcillac la Croze…beautiful!

…love song for esmeralda…

…playing solo…

…duet…

An entry for Sundaystills – sounds.

A post for Sketchercise:

This morning’s walk provided me with greens.I have to admit that I don’t enjoy drawing/painting/rendering leaves. Maybe it is the greens in them I shy away from. I find green a difficult colour to paint in watercolour as well as oil, or any other medium. Beautiful in nautre, difficult to render. Too much green can make me feel quite ill. The wrong greens can look very artificial. Green can easily look flat and lifeless. Like white, green isn’t just ..green. It absorbs and reflects its environment and by looking closer you’ll see browns and reds, yellows and blues…a whole spectrum of colour. And then we get transparent greens and saturated greens, which you can’t paint with only green from a tube or pan. Even oils are difficult and mix differently than watercolour, for one – we have a white which can be added to green in oils, then making it less transparent of course.  Which explains why I rarely paint with green, but prefer mixing a green. And I love to mix it directly it on my paper or canvas to have the colours flow into one another, giving dimension and vibrancy and life, even if the green isn’t the “perfect” green. I sometimes add olive green(Schmincke) and the very different olive green(W&N).

Please do tell how you paint greens?!

…apple branch…

In these three sketches, I have used more or less the same palette:

Cobalt yellow pale(W&N), cobalt yellow deep(W&N), yellow ochre light(Schmincke), lemon yellow(W&N),french ultramarine(Sennelier), cobalt blue(Sennelier), Prussian blue(Sennelier), Cerulean blue(W&N), Paynes gray(W&N), burnt sienna(W&N), raw umber(Sennelier), olive green(Scmincke).

…walnut branch…

…acorn branch…

All sketchesdone with  rotring pen and watercolour in watercolour moleskine

A post for Sketchercise.

With a little bit of time on my hands I put on my heavy hiking boots..urgh.. and took off for a walk. All the flowers on shrubs have made room for berries of all colours. Since I am in the process of noting all the fauna and flora in this area, I dragged along my  sketching palette, which is boringly still the same as you’ll see in this link, except that my sketchbook might be the small moleskine or the normal one…watercolour of course. I like the paper of the watercolour moleskine.

Tokala and Aiyani tailed along, until they realized to their horror that we were going further than normal. That had them plonk down under the apple tree, all the while complaining about my imbecility. On my promise to give them joghurt back home, they sulkily agreed to wait under the apple tree. I kept my promise.

…prunellier and aubepine…

…bramble, stinging nettle and dock leaves…

All sketches done in rotring pen and watercolour in watercolour moleskine.

]]> http://africantapestry.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/le-boss-is-in-paris-sketches/ Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:13:16 +0000 myfrenchkitchen http://africantapestry.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/le-boss-is-in-paris-sketches/

…le Boss is away!!…

It has been quite a while that I held a sketch pen and book in my hand, but now that le Boss is in Paris for the week and I am alone at Coin Perdu, I took my chance to go from …

…this…

…and this…

…to this…

All sketches in rotring pen and watercolour in moleskine.

We’ve been staying in our barn for the past five months.

After starting out with the bare essentials and wearing thick skiwear at night to keep warm in front of the wood burning stove, drinking cups of steaming chocolat chaud and cosying up around campfires, we can now say…it is fun! We have a proper home now in our barn with everything we need, NO television, which we don’t miss. We have running water, warm showers, old ladders for our towels, a coffee corner, a fully equipped kitchen where we prepare fresh and simple meals, couches for lounging, lamps for ambiance, books for drowsing,  comfy sleeping nooks, privacy by means of romantic linen drops tied with antique lace…hunted down at local brocantes. We need nothing more…except maybe exquisite sunsets.

…welcome in our barn…

When renovating, restoring a house, the concept of  “home” changes, even whenstill staying in your home while it is being renovated. It becomes a construction site; the ladders and scaffoldings take the place of comfy couches.  The dusty smells of sand and cement take the place of potpourri. The crunching of debris underneath boots make you long for the soft touch of carpet and barefoot. The days are long and hard, dinners become quick and simple, sleep welcome and deep, mornings early and refreshed…or is early and aching?

The upside of renovating is the anticipation. Much like waiting for that last schoolday before summer, last week before Christmas, the night before your birthday … The road to getting  your home back is a daring crusade.  It is the anticipation that  keeps us going, working through the frustrations, stepping over the irritations, redoing the miscalculations, band-aiding the wounds, kneading the aching muscles. So we need that little corner to unwind at the end of the day. That little restplace where you put side the images of ladders and cement mixers and wallow in soft comfort. That place where you keep the anticipation alive with dreams in warm beds.

…a clear view through our barn…

…full of nothingness…

…a first bite and a first night in a barn home…

…always place for some romance…

When Hartman suggested living in the barn while working on the house, my apprehension knew no boundaries. At the time I was snuggly cuddled up in front of the fireplace in our comfortable and lovely home in Touraine, listening to music, sipping a glass of red wine, reading “Dark Star safari by Paul Theroux, while  the rain and cold and wind were safely locked outside.

Hearing things like: ” cleaning out the all the hay and tools and owls from the barn…dusting… repairing floorboards… moving in some sort of bed… firing up the wooden stove for a hot meal, fixing the doors, find a solution for bathroom facilities…” well, it simply made my hair stand on end and I felt the cold of wind from outside creeping indoors. I took a big sip of red wine, nesteled my derriére deeper into the cushions and faked enthusiastic listening, all the while lifting my one eyebrow higher and higher.

But here I am. Here we are. The days are long and hard. We’re living in the barn. Cleaned out the hay, fired up the wooden stove. We shower in a tin tub found in the barn. I use the pedometer to measure the distance to the longdrop at the far end of the garden. We eat colourful and healthy dinners by candlelight, while sipping on full bodied red wines.

My husband knows me far too well…once I grab onto an idea, which may sometimes take some time…it’s sailing off into the sunset. I finally got carried away with our camping in the barn and it was like being a little girl again in my growing up years, building and constructing interesting tee pees and tree houses and tenthouses, furnishing them with what I could find around the neighbourhood, always filling up a flass with flowers for my “centre table”. Nothing had changed, except that myconstruction is now a barn and my glass is filled with flowers from our own land.

…something of everything…

…relax and offload…

…brushing teeth and then off to bed…

…old wine barrel rim, a tin tub, a new shower curtain, chains and bit of elbow grease and voilà…a perfect shower…

…kitchen corner…

…washing up, hanging tools on an old chicken coop door, and of course a coffee corner with it s cups and plates and nick-nacks…

…let’s see what’s in the pantry…

…le petit coin…

reworked, revamped, a new sanitary systems, modern comfort in an old setting…

…switch off the light and don’t forget to wash hands…

]]> http://lecoinperdu.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/brushes-macromonday/ Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:42:05 +0000 myfrenchkitchen http://lecoinperdu.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/brushes-macromonday/

I started cleaning our barn this morning and stopped with a brush in my hand, thinking it could make for quite a nice photo…the brush I mean, not me…

I use a lot of different brushes when cleaning and I love natural bristles. They don’t scratch and at the end of their days, they make me feel good – seeing how derelict they look in old age, I feel comforted that I at least still look a bit better and last a bit longer…after the same amount of work!

…young and healthy…

…ready and able…

…firm and willing…

…soft and gentle…

All photos with Nikon D70s camera and AF micro nikkor lens 60 mm

An entry for macromonday

I didn’t have time to hit the road with my camera, so I hit the archives instead. The following series of photos are from last Febrary holidays in the Cape, South Africa.

We drove down fromJohannesburg in the north to the Cape in the South, through the extrordinary Karoo with its delicious Karoo lamb meat and dry, captivating, almost desert like atmosphere, its heartbeat steady and undisturbed.

…looking into your future, on the long,  empty roads in the Karoo, Cape…

…sizzling heat on the Karoo roads…

…entering the winelands of the Cape at De Doorns…

…the open road leads to school…

…the road along the coast to Gordons bay…

…knights of the highway(Africa baboon)…

An entry for Sundaystills

After knocking down all the interior walls, we were so anxious to see the double volume which we were planning into our  house that we thought we would just rip out one floorplank and one ceiling plank to have  a clean view from top to bottom. Did it stay by only one plank?  No. Of course not! The opening was too small to really see and we are far too greedy. Our excitement got the better of us. One plank became two, and then three and before we knew it, several planks were ripped out in the floor and the ceiling and there we stood like stargazers on a dark cloudless night; staring upwards.

…ripping up floorplanks…

It was great seeing the double volume! Still hight on excitement, we ran right down to the cellar(where we carried out so much dirt!) and once again bent our necks backwards to be impressed by the height of the double volume. We were impressed. Wonderfully high! Open and spacious. Streams of light filtering in through the roof windows.

…looking through to the beams into the opened up attic in the roof…

…view from the cellar and looking through (which was) the first floor into the roof…

…standing down below in the cellar, which will become the ground floor living area…

I could envision life when it will all be done. Until I bent my neck back into normal position and my brain switched on again, pushing reality to the fore, focusing my eyes on the chaos still waiting. Not one for extravagant optimism, I removed myself from the reality staring me in the face and drove off in our Peugeot bleu for a coffee in town, cruelly leaving the rest of the team-my husband and our two daughters- to deal with reality… It helped.

And to end this episode, like every day here At Coin Perdu: never does a day end without a moment of beauty or inspiration somewhere, making us realize again that all the sweat and hard work is worth it.

…inspiration…

This writing is all about ME. So, if you can’t stand self-indulgence, then you should move on immediately.

I was used to intense birthday celebrations since childhood.  Making a fuss of a birthday was a milieu I grew up in. My mom went to a lot of trouble to make it special, to make the birthday boy/girl feel special, whoever it was. She also made her friends feel special. Somehow she felt special too by seeing everybody else  feel special. She had a good friend from childhood. They both got married at different stages, had their families and ended up living far away from each other, which resulted in less contact. But they religiously called each other every year on their birthdays until my mother died at 84 years old.  And on these birthday calls they chatted away, catching up on the year’s news, and time and distance fell away. Isn’t that special...

…l’orage approche…

oil on canvas, 30×30cm

After leaving home, my birthday celebration years continued. With my family. With a small but close circle of friends. And a few traditions. I have a friend celebrating the same day as mine. Every year on our birthday, Naomi baked(and still does) this incredible black forest cake. Only this one time a year. And it was tradition that I would go over to her house  for a quick coffee(before all the visits started) and the two of us would feast on a slice each. With another friend I shared another kind of tradition; I baked her a cake on her birthday and she bake me one on my birthday…I once got a  sticky marsh-mellow cake from her and on her birthday she got a giant pink and white cake smothered in rose petals from me. We laughed. This very same friend, Colette, booked an airoplane ticket  a few years later to share  my 40th  birthday with me in South Carolina, US. Isn’t that special…

I had a surprise one year, organized by Mariaan, one crazy, deliciously fun friend. Nobody called me on my birthday that year. It was a strange phenomena.  It just didn’t happen. I was always spoiled with phone calls and drop-ins and cards from very early morning on every birthday. That year…nothing! Nada! Except of course for my family living far away. By the evening I was in such a bad state of depression that I decided to leave town the next day, never to return. I would go live with the animals in the bush. On our way out to “dinner” that evening(my last meal in civilization, I decided…), I opened the door and stared into the laughing faces of my whole circle of friends.  Each with a huge dish of food and drinks and coloured gifts with huge bows and even huger smiles. We ate and drank and danced, they washed dishes and we kept the neighbourhood up until early hours. Isn’t that special…

Then we left South Africa. Celebrating birthdays changed face very suddenly. The next birthday was only the four of us and our good friends Cecily and family in Felixstowe, who were there for one year.  I tried very hard to be original, making us a meal in grandiose style..so many courses, wearing  evening attire with french perfumes, sat down to a pristine set table…just to have an over the top, overcooked meal with the dessert literally running off the meringue! But the memory of laughter and jokes and joy of sharing with family and two good friends in a foreign country stays firmly on the plate. Isn’t that special…

Since then, birthdays have been quiet and I’ve been spoiled by my family with love,  gifts early morning in bed, breakfasts, and intimate dinners in chateaux, dinners by die fire and a far away call here and there. Isn’t that special…

...le forêt…

oil on canvas, 24×33cm

This week I was surprised with facebook wishes from all over the planet, with Marta being the leader of the pack..starting it off already a day early! I was bowled over by the wishes from people I have just recently met, or never met yet , or only seen photos of, or only exchanged emails with and even people I never thought would care to send me wishes! I received a mail from a friend who is away on holiday in Corsica, who cared enough to take some time from precious sunny days to send me good wishes. I received an international  mobile phone call from a good friend in SA who couldn’t reach me at home in Montlouis, who will have a horrendously expensive bill to pay very soon!! There is a gift waiting for me in the mail and by opening it, my house will be strewn with glitter stars and I will find a star on the floor somewhere until next year when her next gift will show up, decorated with glittery stars! After all the quiet years with only my small family here in France and  a call here and there from my family and friends far away. Now isn’t that special…!

Maybe you receive a lot of special attention on your  special day in the year and might think this is peanuts to the attention you receive! It is possible. Maybe you’re reading here and thinking peeved how lucky I am for you don’t even receive a single note or call! It is possible. Which makes this writing then not so selfindulgent any more. Because at some stage or another, we all have the need to feel special. To have  a memory of one day in a year that belonged only to you, a day that you can look back onto and say: “Now wasn’t that special..!”

While taking a break from loading gravel yesterday, this  little baby lizard came into our circle of relaxation. It amused us for quite a while with its typical child like behavior and I could’ve sworn it loved the attention!

Photos taken with Nikon D70 camera and AF micro nikkor lens, 60mm,1:2.8D

…looking to see if we’re looking…

…stopping by Macdonalds…

…playing shy…

…finally  a smiling pose…

An entry for Macromonday.

One of the wonderful things about living in the country, is that you can have undisturbed views on the moon and stars and skies …and clouds. To photograph and paint them, is a major challenge and of course a major delight.

Clouds have each their own atmosphere; a threatening storm, soft and rain filled, stark white agains a cold winter blue sky, grey mists rolling in…then there are the tales they tell; a dragon flying through the air, a ballet dancer in pirouette, a crocodile yawning, an old man smoking his pipe…Who hasn’t stared at the clouds sweeping by while stretched out on a green lawn -lazy after indulging in too  much watermelon – and wondered what goes on up there and beyond.

The first four cloud images were taken at Coin Perdu in Correze. And the last one was taken at the Loire right opposite our home in Montlouis sur Loire, Touraine.

All photos taken with Nikon D70 SLFR and 28-90mm zoomlens.

…the explosion…

…a sunset in April…

…a threatening storm at dusk…

…sunset and airoplane lines…

…a sunset on the river Loire across our home in Montlouis sur Loire…

An entry for Sundaystills – clouds.

]]> http://africantapestry.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/bales-of-hay-in-oil/ Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:04:58 +0000 myfrenchkitchen http://africantapestry.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/bales-of-hay-in-oil/

We are so busy at your mountain home, swinging hammers, knocking out beams, digging trenches for drainage under floors…the closest I can get to being creative , is rubbing Aloe vera hot gel on sore muscles and Arnica on purple bruises. I do take my camera out frequently to record the renovation process and then at the same time quickly dash off to snap an insect or pretty flower or some raindrops.

We have also got highspeed internet now at Coin Perdu and this weekend we cuckooed around the computer as if it were a new born baby with blue eyes! We also have a telephone. Not that I’m excited about that. I hat a telephone. But it does signify that slowly but surely things are progressing at Coin Perdu and we are not alone out here!

…bales of hay…

I did manage to paint the bales of hay that had been cut on our land…an interesting process that fascinated me for the whole two weeks it took to cut the land, air it, roll it and then load it to store for the winter. It gave me a huge kick to know our land was giving back to nature.

…painting it…

After the good rains of yesterday, this morning’s walk provided many opportunities for photos. Drops on plants and fences, water puddles, the snails were abundant and gay in their feasting, the mud stuck optimistically to my hiking boots, making them heavier with each step and I arrived wet and dirty back home. Nothing a shower and good coffee couldn’t fix.

I played around with some water drops on fences and leaves. Back home I realized there wers some dust particles on my lense which shows up on my photos. I was in no mood to go all the way back and redo it all. So it comes down to living with it. I can do that. A lesson for the future:  clean lenses more often.

…water drops on washing line…

…water drops on leaf…

An entry for Macromonday.

…water…

…fire…

…earth…

…air…

…life…

An  entry for Sundaystills.