en route to autignac: day 1

today we are flying to paris. when we land, we will head to the gare de lyon, to catch the tgv for a three-and-a-half hour high speed train ride to montpellier. in montpellier, we will take a taxi to the renault eurodrive office, where we will pick up our leased renault Kadjar crossover.  then we will drive 50 minutes to our rented house in the tiny 800 person village of autignac.  we will be traveling for about 24 hours straight, sleeping only when we can on the plane and train.

upon arriving in autignac, we will greet a few neighbors with two cheek kisses, and a few close friends with three cheek kisses, and i will probably sleep for 18 hours (which is what i did last time). once rested, we will head to the local intermarché grocery store to start provisioning our house for our 5 month stay, stocking the fridge, the pantry, and the medicine cabinet, and then swinging by the garden store Baobab to buy herbs for potting on the terrace. next will come the apple store, to buy me an iMac, and then to the art store Cultura, in Béziers, to buy the white poster boards i need for STILL backdrops. there is a chance we will make an ambitious and possibly ill advised one-day trip to Marseille and back, so that Steve can go to the knife shop at Maison Empereur, in order to buy one more in the series of chef knives he has used during each of our trips. when we are fully provisioned–with food, art supplies, cell phones, and wifi–then we will check in with the high school where we have registered our 15 year son for fall semester.

it’s a lot. so i’m giving you a heads-up that i will be off-line for a few days while we are in transit, and then sleeping off jet lag, and setting up our new temporary home. to give myself a little breathing room i have queued up a few STILL photos from our very first extended stay in autignac.  that was a long time ago, and it has been fun to look through the old images and remember how wide-eyed and naive we were on that first trip.  so, hang with me here for bit, and once i am up and running, we will be back to new images that i hope will come from deeper in the country, with a more nuanced perspective, than nine years ago, when we showed up in this place, so full of enthusiasm, and, in too many ways to count, so completely unprepared for what we were about to experience…

an occitanie nature assemblage

leaf leather

usually aquatic vegetation does not photograph well because there is too much gravity in the air as opposed to the water, and because when aquatic plants dry, they they shrivel up into something resembling a wad of abandoned fishing net. this water lily, however, dried into an elegant, still flexible, three dimensional substance that looks tough enough to make a water lily colored upper for a men’s loafer.

dried lily pad leaf

unexpected sentimentality

i don’t usually love these bright saturated summer colors, but i am feeling a sudden fondness for them as i begin packing for france. soon i will leave minnesota high summer behind for a low, prickly landscape of mostly olive green. there are compensations, however.

summer petals

still learning

after i took yesterday’s photo, i placed the white lily flower in a bowl of water. as evening progressed, the lily closed up. i assumed it was because i had violated it by snipping off its stem. but the enormous bud was as elegant in it’s contained simplicity as the blossom had been elegant in its gaudy exuberance. so i photographed the bud. and then this morning it magically appeared to rise from the dead, opening up slowly and surely into full open palmed bloom. so i googled american white water lily, and sure enough–the flower closes up every evening, and reopens every morning. seven yeas of STILL blog, seven years of paying attention, seven years of living on a lake with water lilies surrounding our dock, and yesterday i learned about this daily ritual for the first time.

american white lily bud (Nymphaea odorata)

unintended consequences

i intended the white lily to be the featured artist of this particular drama, but look how the bit players have flexed their muscles and veins, and, insisting that lily pads area about leaves not flowers, stolen the show.

american white water lily with lily pads (Nymphaea odorata)