having a back-up frees me up

this was the second pattern i made with these beautiful golden lichen colored branches that i scavenged from the side of a french rural highway. i will post my first effort tomorrow. not to be boring, but to talk about how i work sometimes. i like to do a quick take of a subject (quick and dirty i call it), and know that i have that photo as a fallback. then i can try something fancier with less pressure, and let it be a failure if that’s the way it wants to be.

lichen-covered twigs from agde, france

la saison des champignons

these were harvested by my husband, if we’re going to be honest, from the market stall in front of the covered halles in sète this morning, while i sipped from a glass of late-morning rosé on the sunny cafe terrace next door, and waited for a platter of oysters and sea urchins to be delivered to our table. let me tell you. this blogging life in france is going to kill me.

cèpes (porcini)

maternal?

one wouldn’t normally associate the words agave and maternal. but as i look at this image, all i can think of how maternally the outer leaf is keeping the inner baby leaf snugly wrapped against her body. my husband used to love to swaddle our kids when they were infants. he wrapped them tightly with such care and precision. like they were zipped into their swaddling. like this beautiful leaf.

agave leaf 

colors of autignac

sorting bits and pieces by color today, i subconsciously made a composition that the reflects colors of the homes in our village: terra cotta, tan, dusty green, faded pink, and pale ochre. apparently i have internalized the south of france, and it is now seeping out  the pores of my imagination. i guess there are worse things.

bits and pieces of langedocien nature

an encouraging start

our son joe got a really good grade on his first test in french class in his french school. it wasn’t top of the class but it was above average in a class full of french students. it would be sort of like a french student in the us getting a b+ on an english composition in the first week of school. but the thing is that french schoolteachers never give excessive praise. all praise is measured. and so joe’s teacher commented that this was a “début encourageant.” an encouraging start. i have been trying to amass a striped rock collection. this is what i have so far. in america this would be un début encourageant. in france it would be “un peu décevant.”  a bit disappointing.

striped beach rock from Sète