CLOSE TO HOME - October 1 2011

1st October, 2011  

Another day of extraordinary weather. Really, except for the day of our arrival - which is hard to believe was 12 days ago! - we have had summery days on end: the blue Provencal sky, temperatures in the low 80's and barely a breeze. And the evenings are so long that even though we like to dine on the early side, we do so in front of the vast window open to the world, sometimes even sitting on the wide sill to munch on an appetizer. And often we will find ourselves called out again, to feel the last of the heat reflecting off the stone walls of the house and to watch as another day fades through it's palette of lilacs and pinks until finally one surrenders to the night.

Joel received an enormous box of his first proofs for the retrospective book and so the last 3 days have had to be mainly given to his proofing some 300 photographs and there are another 300 on their way!  A strange and wonderful predicament for him: to be finishing a book on his life's work, while making a book on our new lives, with Provence as the through-line.

But we manage to grab a few hours each day to drag him away from his past and into our present. Simple sorties in the region. Next week we'll take a trip to Les Calanques and there will be other side trips made during our time here, but for now it's the Luberon, and really that's a book unto itself.

So, let me give you some snapshots of the last few days.

A few afternoons ago, we drove to the Cedar Forest, which is at the top of the hill we look out to. Some 500 acres, it was planted 150 years ago in 1860, from seeds brought over from the Atlas Mountains in Algeria. We get there in the late afternoon which is a perfect time as the angle of the sun comes through these mighty cedars and illuminates all the ground cover and shrubs, so that it is almost as though you are walking on a bed of tinkling lights. We leave the main trail and walk in silence for perhaps a mile. It's just us and the trees, birdsong and the occasional buzz of insects. We find a possible second home...

...but decide one really in enough for us. And at this point, with the Buyers having been approved for financing, it looks as though our Cape house will close on the 21st as scheduled.

Eventually we come out to a rocky plateau and sit there soaking up the misty light as it falls over valleys and mountains. We've basically crossed the crest of the Petit Louberon...and it's just 5K's from our apartment. Back home and sitting once again at the big window we have a deeper connection looking out to the hillside - we were just up there in its deep mystery.

The light has gone now from the hillside, the lavender field with its 7 cherry trees looks rather like a faded handkerchief, but with luck it will be sunlit again tomorrow.

And so it is. We spend the morning in the glorious Friday market in Lourmarin, stopping to buy some gorgeous shrimp which they keep on ice for us while we continue shopping. We buy:

Some French linen, to cover my journals

2 handfuls of girolle mushrooms

A wooden spoon

2 wooden knives

A tarte citron

A berry tart

and are given a little chocolate cake as a gift

black olives

an antique cotton nightshirt

sun dried tomatoes

lettuce

tomatoes

and 2 small hand soaps made with olive oil

 a medieval looking, multi-bladed scissor for chopping vegetables 

   Can you see the special order she has put the berries in?

Arriving home we heat up the lentil soup and then, after a bowl each, devour the entire berry tart.

The sun is now on our patch of lavender heaven and we load up 2 panniers with a blanket, pillows, fresh grape juice and the books we are currently reading and 5 minutes later we're lying under the middle cherry tree, gazing up through it's turning leaves to the uninterrupted expanse of blue. We do not read our books. We do eat the chocolate cake. And guzzle the grape juice. And somehow, 2 hours pass and I realize that a big part of my Provencal experience is a never-ending day dream quality. Whether it's a lavender field, wandering the back streets of a town, sitting on a rocky ledge surrounded by wild thyme, or listening to the bells of a 1000 year-old church, we seem to move through time as though suspended in it.