Soreze, France

Having spent all our cash on books in Montalban, the next afternoon we headed to Soreze which has an ATM as well as beautiful architecture!

 

 

I wandered the town by myself.

Discovering the church grounds . . . 

 

 

 The public garden & park, 

 

 

 

and finally joining up with the group.

An outdoor cafe for refreshments was were we all met up.  It seemed so part of the day I didn't even think to take photos.  Oh well.  Imagine a table with espresso cups and Orangina glasses.

Soreze is not far from La Cascade, so a few of us walked back.

After all the rain it was lovely to be outside.

Shopping For Books

Our heroine is having a heck of a time getting the trip to France posted.  It's not like there are a lot of followers of this blog, but for those who are being patient, thank you so much.  Today, we venture out for a glimpse of one of the field trips the group took:

  Note the raincoat Kelly is holding.

We may have been in southern France, but the beginning of our week was perfect weather for ducks!

Up the mountain to Montolieu, the book town.

  One of our projects specifically called for a book to use as our canvas.  Plus even the most ordinary of books here would be in French and pages would be so lovely for our other projects!  

 

I found a wonderful book with letter press printed woodcuts, an almanac of the year I was born and the find of the day --  a cashe of papers and letters. . . I'm not sure I would have discovered the cache if the shop owner didn't speak perfect English and had been married to a woman named Merrily.  Serendipity!
 
I had wandered off by myself into Librairie Lattitudes, a shop specializing in books on history & exploration.  I wasn't really that interested in these topics and he certainly didn't have books to cut up for art projects!  But the shop had a great feel and we spoke the same language!  I found a couple books I could afford.  He seemed to approve of my choices and we got talking.  He asked my name and laughed when I told him.  I don't know what made me ask, but I wondered if he had paper for sale -- written documents, letters, that sort of thing.  He went in the back and brought out a plastic grocery bag full of stuff:  Letters, ration coupons, an old book, etc.  It wasn't the sort of thing he usually sold, he had gotten it from an estate sale locally.  The lot wasn't elegant and some of the pieces were quite worn; I didn't look at it very carefully, but it felt like a good find.  So I said I would take it, and was there an ATM machine in town.  No, but he would gladly take US dollars and the transaction was complete!  It still makes me smile to think of the fun I had talking with Michel.

 

After that lovely experience and also since I was out of cash, I wandered around til I found my friends at this cafe.  Of course as soon as I shared my finds half of them went off to Michel's shop to see if he had any other wonderful bits.


It was a great afternoon and we all found things to use in our next projects.

Garden, Unexpected!

 The garden, put to bed.

Weeds removed, mulch applied, quiet expected.

But look closer.

What are those roses doing on October 25th?

My crazy garden, or maybe I should say, crazy New England weather is so warm that all my roses:  Golden Showers climber, Jacob's Coat climber and the pretty pink hybrid tea my son rescued from the nursery's toss pile are all blooming -- like crazy!

Leaves changing beautiful colors has not happened in our yard.  But we've got roses -- that's magical!

Our heroine will return to continue the tale of her France Adventure soon.  Seems her friend's passing was more upsetting than she realized and it has taken this long to get her equilibrium back.