en hâte – a quick trot around
March 23, 2023
On a daily quick trot around the village I note the quite magnificent blossom this year on the amandier (almond trees) with scent that flowed through the air for tens of metres. And it looks as though smaller plants such as the native iris are coming to the flowering party too – this group I appreciate growing up from the footings of the lavoir building opposite L’Accalmie, the village B+B – this old ‘jardin’ area remains uncultivated but the existing plants don’t care – thank goodness . . .
. . . one of the many apertures of L’Accalmie is host to another almond – from here the view to the south takes in the statuesque horse chestnut.
St Pons la Calm is an unassuming village with housing and work buildings for the vignerons and their families and those working in the fields. The odd spaces are given over to the productive so a planting of olives is appropriate and entirely expected. Hopefully these open plots are not filled in. The flowers of the mimosas (Acacia dealbata) are just just petering out . . .
. . . but the abricots are at the starting blocks. The water tower, le Pont Roux remains a static calming landmark in the fields to the north of the village.
https://saint-pons-la-calm.fr/patrimoine/Pont-Roux_fichiers/pont_roux.htm
Just beside the tower and its associated ditch which morphs into a path, the seasonal notice and barrier goes up between March and July to protect the nursery habitat of the toads. The laces and toads are visible at close quarters but none today.
However the hoopoes are back.
Walking along the ridge of the Bois Nègre I spy what seems to be a mirage but, of course not, just sheets of plastic on the asperge humps . . .
. . . with a lonely orchis purpurea in the foreground but in reality, the verges and ditches are fully populated with them now.
Back home the top lawn is a matrix of violas, baby blue eyes, pink lewesia, alliums, muscari, trefoils, euphorbia, daisies and pissenlit so hence the choice of poem.
I can’t pretend to a golden parabola,
or to the downing of many pints
For making a magnificent water.
I can’t begin to write my name, no
Not even my pet name, in the snow:
Except in pointless unreadable script.
But I can print a stream of bubbles
into water with velocity
you’d have to call aesthetic.
I can shoot down a jet stream
so intense my body rises
a full forty feet and floats
on a bubble stem of grace
for just a few seconds
up there in the urban air. Jo Shapcott Piss Flower
a river – a village – l’un des plus belles villages de france
October 5, 2022
Aiguèze sits above the Rhone surrounded by vineyards on the lower slopes and garrigue landscape on the higher. This village is included in the grouping of Les Plus Belles Villages de France with another 3 villages – Lussan, la Roque sur Cèze, Montlcus – similarly crowned all within 20 kms . . .
the remains of the keep and the Saracen tower, witnesses of the old fortified castle, the fortifications and their walkway (11th century), which we owe to the Count of Toulouse… From the Saracen invasions (8th century) to the “Jacqueries” (14th century), Aiguèze underwent – like many villages in the medieval period! Aiguèze suffered – like many villages in the Middle Ages – destruction, looting and other revolts that could have led to its disappearance. Fortunately, it was not! The village owes much of its current appearance to Monsignor Fuzet, Archbishop of Rouen and “child of the country”, who devoted a lot of time and resources to its conservation and modernization at the beginning of the 20th century. Thus, for example, the Place du Jeu de Paume, planted with plane trees, where one meets for the game of bowls, or the 11th century church and its crenellated facades. Throughout the walk, the typical southern architecture of the region is revealed. The Grand Rue paved with Ardèche pebbles, the vaulted passage of the “Combe aux oiseaux” or the light stone houses with round tile roofs confirm it: we are indeed in the South!
https://www.les-plus-beaux-villages-de-france.org/fr/
. . . the interior of the church is a delight and all surfaces painted within an inch of its life – patterns, colour, shapes and joyful decoration – thanks to Monseigneur Fuzet, archiveque de Rouen, who restored the church interior in the style of Notre-Dame de Paris. This little chap, however, looks totally fed up with it all – his toes touched and stroked by all who coud reach . . .
. . . the churchyard is cosy – sheltered from the winds blowing downstream from the Ardèche . . .
. . . narrow streets (les ruelles étroites) provide shade as well as framing glimpses through and beyond. The olives are just turning now . . .
. . . in Grande Rue, an atelier and house of an artist, curioser and curioser . . .
. . . tough resilient yucca snuggling up to an armandier on Rue du Castelas overlooking Chemin de Borian where generations of boatmen and fishermen lived and worked. Tough and resilient pistacia lentiscus is also on show in the garrigue above the village. The resin makes a gum noted for medicinal uses – improving digestion and intestinal ulcers, oral health, and liver health too – so useful but also attractive . .
. . . looking downstream with Mont Ventoux and the mountains to the east . . .
. . . and upstream towards the Ardèche and Drôme – mesmerising with questions to be answered.
Then Almitra spoke, saying, ‘We would ask now of Death.’
And he said:
You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance. Death Xx11 Kahlil Gibran
inside/outside
October 13, 2021
In Avignon to enjoy some architecture and some lunch sitting opposite the ramparts built as defence in the 13/14C. They circle the town with a running length of approx 4kms and were wrapped originally so the city was moated. In some places the double set of walls is easy to see . . .
. . . wandering into Place Crillon and gazing upwards at the Ancienne Comédie d’Avignon the composition in carved stone above the entrance is intricate in content as well as craftsmanship. Beside the theatre a charming but also modest balcony . . .
At the Collection Lambert the current exhibition is ‘How to Disappear’ . . . make of that what you will . .
but good to see that the kids haven’t disappeared from the classroom.
Interesting pieces from Cy Twombly, Nan Goldin and Sol LeWitt amongst others.
In a little while
I’ll be gone
The moments already passed
Yeah, it’s gone
And I’m not here
This isn’t happening
I’m not here
I’m not here. Radiohead How to Disappear Completely and Never to be Found
In the cours the writing is on the wall and outside the cours in Rue Violette something left for . . . or ruinée and I’ve been here before
A morning looking for birds organised by COGard https://cogard.org. The group met at Lac de Codolet where the river Rhone meets the river Cèze. A lake created when gravel extraction was needed to construct the Rhone canal. Looking N/W Camp de César is visible above Laudun https://www.beyond.fr/sites/cesars-camp-laudun.html.
The research centre at Marcoule forms a landmark – it’s a nuclear site and power plant . . .
. . . we heard bouscarlede de Cetti (Cettis warbler), chiff chaff, alouette, and saw cerf volant rouge (red kite), martin pecheur (kingfisher), pic épeichette and pic vert (lesser spotted and green woodpeckers), cormorans, hérons cendres grandes, cygnes, mésange à longue blanche queue (long tailed tit) where poplars and hawthorns border the lake . . .
. . . we were well informed too by Marion who led us to the whirlpool and the Barrage de Caderousse where choucas (jackdaws) nested in the drainage holes. Flotsam decorated the edges of the old Rhone and a few locals scavanged the timber detritus.
Sorry not to have added photos of the birds but so busy with the jumelles – maybe next time.
When we first emerged, we assumed
what we’d entered
was the world,
and we its only creatures.
Soon, we could fly; soon
we’d mastered its grey gloom,
could steal a single
waterdrop
even as it fell.
Now you who hesitate,
fearful of the tomb-smell,
fearful of shades,
look up – higher!
How deft we are,
how communicative, our
scorch – brown wings almost
translucent against the blue.
Deserts, moonlit oceans, heat
climbing from a thousand coastal cities
are as nothing now,
say our terse screams.
The cave – dark we were born in
calls us back. Kathleen Jamie.
a verge or two
May 5, 2021
Oh, such delightful eruptions of iris this year on the road side – starting off in early April and full on in recurring displays through to May. It’s the outward curve in the stem of the plant set off by the cascading flower en double tier that is show stopping . . . seen in groups around the most modest sentiers. Of course, they love the drainage that a bank offers up. All photos from the roads and sentiers around the village . . .
. . . in some points a garrigue type planting has taken hold – a tapestry of cistus, thymes, lavandins, rosmarin, euphorb and aphyllanthes that looks like sisyrinchium, merge in a tapestry effect which can look shrubby and rough – many plants in this habitat have aromatic foliage and thus oils and monoterpenes will leach into the soils from leaf litter. This asserts the dominance of a plant over its companion and ensures the characateristic open spacing and, so restricted flora in the garrigue.
And sometimes opuntia (prickly pear) throw out an aria on a bank situation (drainage again) – soprano, so middle C to high A, methinks – just to disconcert and mix in the exotic.
From up close of the verges into longer views and back to understanding what this small in size, agricultural in commerce, landscape here ( St Pons la Clam) is about – vines, apricots and cherries and asperges . . .
from dawn to dusk the gatherers are at it. Lifting asperges – green and white – for the marketplace. The plastic that is used to force is a horrid development – presumably in the past sacking was employed . . . or the produce wasn’t forced.
The fruit is turning red already and promises much.
In another environment, but not far away, this little blue flowering gem was noted in the verge – buglossoides purpurocaerulea – it’s a borage – but the little sweet thing below remains unnamed. I think its lamiaceae . . .
. . . and saw it wandering around St Gervais, near Bagnols, on the route to discovering Les Célettes, a charming hameau with good vineyard, Domaine Sante Anne, and with a forgotten but discovered again feel.:
Of course the poem stands as it does and now the term ‘weed’ is known as the right plant but in the wrong place but my thought on selecting it is that ‘they move in and colonise, if the environment suits them, and that’s what I love. Ah plants, so much more beautiful than human beings.
Long live the weeds that overwhelm
My narrow vegetable realm! –
The bitter rock, the barren soil
That force the son of man to toil;
All things unholy, marked by curse,
The ugly of the universe.
The rough, the wicked and the wild
That keep the spirit undefiled.
With these I match my little wit
And earn the right to stand or sit,
Hope, look, create, or drink and die:
These shape the creature that is I. Theodore Roethke
epitaph: roadside in the Camargue today – iris pseudoacorus in fosse plein d’eau.
near and far – lockdown – the 1 km walk
May 6, 2020
As of early May, we are allowed to walk for an hour or within 1 km from the abode. My usual pace is 4/5kms an hour and rather cheekily I’ve developed a walk in a quadrant that sort of fits the government rules as well as satisfying personal need. We are lucky here as interesting and absorbing walks are possible in all four directions and, as my habit is to look to the distance and so ‘far’, as well as to plants at close quarters, and so ‘near’, then I thought to catalogue an easy and favourite walk to look back at in the future. Out of the village to the east on Chemin des Rosiers/Chemin des Huguenots before moving south through the vineyards and noting on the verge Gladiolus (above) which I think is G.illyricus as against G. byzantinus and just a single clump. Plenty of Lathyrus clymenum (below), a member of the pea family, clambers wherever possible . . .
. . . from here the view to the village acros cereals and vines through the late morning haze. And then turning 180 degrees to view the statuesque fig orchards where foliage and fruit have suffered recent cold temperatures resulting in a late show . . .
. . . the elder (Sambucus) is very floriferous this year so opening up for gallons of elderflower cordial while, low down, clover romps attractively along the ground.
The old mill was accessible four years ago but now just a landmark slowly disappearing and seemingly going to sleep under encroaching ivy. However, it is here that the orchestra, chorus and prima donnas fill the air – frogs, woodpeckers, nightingales – a big presence this year – and hoopoes create the musical cloud around and overhead while below there is scuttling in the bottom of the hedges and a fluttering higher up. Stand and listen . . .
. . . unassuming dogwood flowers now and the view to the village is framed with dwarf oak. Onward down to the river Tave – more a stream here – the track is sheltered and shaded with overhanging branches of ash, walnut, alder and poplars . . .
. . . it’s a delightful track and very welcome after the open areas in full sun. Onwards to the west and the banks supporting the fields are full of a country style mix of coquelicots et chardons – early summer is sublime n’est-ce-pas?
Retuning up to the north and views in the distance of the village and church – and then the place, or the square filled with plane trees, empty now but maybe soon – filled with folks – where I live (house in background) and home again but off out again tomorrow.
On lockdown, I’m back reading One Art Elizabeth Bishop Letters, for possibly the fifth or sixth time – I love her work. And her fragility is so close. EB revered Marianne Moore having met her in her early 20’s while she was at Vassar and the friendship and mentorship continued for decades. I find M Moore’s poetry challenging on the academic level but revere it and the fascination remains. So:
is some such word
as the chord
Brahms had heard
from a bird,
sung down near the root of the throat:
it’s the downy little woodpecker
spiralling a tree –
up up up like mercury:
a not long
sparrow-song
of hayseed
magnitude –
a tuned reticence with rigour
from strength at the source. Propriety is
Bach’s Solfegietto-
harmonica and basso.
The fish-spine
on firs, on
somber trees
by the sea’s
walls of wave-worn rock – have it; and
a moonbow and Bach’s cheerful firmness
in a minor key
It’s an owl – and – a – pussy –
both – content
agreement.
Come, come. It’s
mixed with wits;
it’s not a graceful sadness. It’s
resistance with bent head, like foxtail
millet’s. Brahms and Bach,
no; Bach and Brahms. To thank Bach
for his song
first, is wrong.
Pardon me;
both are the
unintentional pansy – face
uncursed by self – inspection; blackened
because born that way. Marianne Moore Propriety
what’s happening – april 2020
April 2, 2020
what’s happening = not much and no excuses. Me, and the cat, have been lolling around trying to fill our days. He’s much better at it than I am. I was brought up in an industrious household where folks were always busy doing six things at once and shame on you if you didn’t follow suite.
We have had serendipitous tulip planting in the pots in the garden. Interesting as I thought I bought soft pink and dark burgundy tulips but have ended up with strong reds and yellows . . .
. . . no matter and it’s good to be shaken up. The Bengal crimson rose is in full throttle – the cane and plant pot hood denote the position of a dahlia – such a jolly rose and marvellous value. Really I love it to bits.
Am also totally gone on the combination of Hardenbergia violocea (tender as an Australian native and so needs fleecing up in cold months) scrambling through Solanum laxum ‘Album’ (a South American native), evergreen, fast and easy to manage. It’s a romper.
Other containers are in party mode – well it’s easy before they suffer from high heat – before drying out – and there’s the perfume too. The osteospermum has a strong aroma thats reminds me of a lovely spliff . . .
. . . Iris ‘Bel Azur’ from Cayeux – the only really decent Iris suppliers – with Solanum rantonetti, a marvel – goes on and on – and easily manageable.
At the allotment or ‘jardin’ across the square/ place, I notice that I should contemplate hanging a new gate . . .
. . . but we’re all ready to go. Although it looks bare under the earth potatoes and sunflowers waiting to thrust through. Never have my grass paths received so much attention . . . but looking upwards to the boundaries, my neighbour’s plot has espaliered pears that are showing beautifully . . .
. . . but the other neighbour needs to do some pruning here.
Across the small path, Chemin des Jardins by the lavoir, a plot that has always until now been a home to a couple of horses. However, no more – what is this instead? some discussion on a possible art installation or just new trees . . .
. . . good news to us all is that the lavoir is full.
Fumitory abounds in the verges and a delicate low sedum over the walls. I will do better. Somehow . . .
It was a perfect day
For sowing; just
As sweet and dry was the ground
As tobacco-dust.
I tasted deep the hour
Between the far
Owl’s chuckling first soft cry
And the first star.
A long stretched hour it was;
Nothing undone
Remained; the early seeds
All safely sown.
And now, hark at the rain,
Windless and light,
Half a kiss, half a tear,
Saying good-night. Edward Thomas Sowing
Garden soon to go to bed at Chaumont. Le Jardin qui Chante
October 12, 2019
We normally visit the festival every other year as not only are the show gardens a talking point but we also enjoy the land art and sculptures exhibited within the grounds as well as the art within parts of the chateau. The theme for the 28th, Paradise Gardens, interested us particularly. I had assisted students from the University of Greenwich on a garden 4 years ago so not only did I realise how tight the 11,000 euro budget was but also the potential and constrictions of the build over 2 months from February to April. The planting has to look ‘verdant’ from day one and continue through with seasonal change until November. The in – house maintenance team gave good advise on the conditions in this part of the Loire.
This was our concept: The Singing Garden seeks to enchant and create a sense of wonder in the viewer. The work is an invitation to dream, perhaps to transport you to the Persian Pairidaeza of the Koran, where the fruiting aromatic plants captivate our senses and the melodious song of birds tempt us to reflect on a time when humans and the natural world lived in harmony.
The dawn chorus lures the viewer through the portal, past a planted screen into the enclosed beauty of the woodland of fruiting trees which provide a cool resting place, an opportunity to lie back on the cushions, relax, gaze upward to the filtered tracery of the sky and the ornamental nests of exotic birds.
The magic is there for children and adults alike. The Singing Garden questions our perception of nature and the enclosed space. The use of sound will evoke the fragile but resilient character inherent in the natural world. The sound will rise and fall silent, reminding us that human impact on the world we share can be destructive to other life forms. At heart the message is one of hope without complacency.
The planting emphasises the practical aims, the plants that provide fruits, oils, seeds, whilst enchanting with colour and form. Recycled hard materials are used with subtlety and to acknowledge the ecological dilemmas that we are faced with today.
We hope that The Singing Garden will create tranquility whilst raising important questions about our outside spaces, both cultivated and wild.
Following our application (Anny’s visual formed the centre piece) . . . ,
. . . we heard nothing for a long time. However, when we got the nod, work began in earnest including a more detailed set of drawings; sourcing a sound consultant who assisted with technicalities advising on amplifiers and loudspeakers to be housed in the surrounding hedging (we wanted to use bird song and other wildlife sounds from the natural environment ; sourcing a willow worker (Blaise Cayol who works from Tavel in the Gard https://www.celuiquitresse.com) for the screen and the nests that were to be hung in the 14 Malus ‘Evereste’. Plants were to be sourced via the Domaine. Mostly of good quality but a few less so. First site visit to our alloted ‘parcelle’ on a cold January day . . .
. . . the plot was smaller than the surveyors diagram so we had to adjust and rejig but we liked this plot immensely especially the overhanging branches from, and the presence of the large oak just beyond.
The main contractor was local and efficient – thank you Julien Bourdin https://www.bourdin-terrassement-paysage.fr
We made 3 visits of about 4 days each during the build with final planting in the second week of April – a frost followed us across the Loire. . .
Once the garden was complete and open on April 25th, the maintenance team took control. It was good to see and hear the public response especially to the sound element within the garden especially from the school groups during our visits in May and July. I would have liked to ‘finesse’ the planting early on – all the digitalis disappeared and the substitute roses were very disappointing – but that’s a no-no’.
click on this link for some sound
The Festival closes on November 3rd and most of the gardens will be taken apart.
I see that I used this poem in August 2010 blogging about nurturing and producing crops on the allotment in Hastings. I feel it’s apt as an adjunct here primarily for the classical references – the Loire valley being packed with mythological, classical and traditional allusions in architecture, landscape and literature.
Lady of kitchen-gardens, learned
In the ways of the early thin-skinned rhubarb,
Whose fingers fondle each gooseberry bristle,
Stout currants sagging on their flimsy stalks,
And sprinting strawberries, that colonise
As quick as Rome.
Goddess of verges, whose methodical
Tenderness fosters the vagrant croppers,
Gawky raspberries refugees from gardens,
Hip, sloe, juniper, blackberry, crab,
Humble abundance of health, hedge, copse,
The layabouts’ harvest.
Patron of orchards, pedantic observer
Of rites, of prune, graft, spray and pick,
In whose honour the Bramley’s branches
Bow with their burly cargo, from grass-deep
To beyond ladders, you who teach pears their proper shape,
And brush the ripe plum’s tip with a touch of crystal.
I know your lovers, earth’s grubby godlings;
Silvanus, whose province is muck-heaps
And electric fences; yaffle-headed Picus;
Faunus the goatman. All of them friends
Of the mud-caked cattle, courting you gruffly
With awkward, touching gifts.
But I am irrepressible, irresponsible
Spirit of Now; no constant past,
No predictable future. All my genius
Goes into moments. I have nothing to give
But concentration and alteration. Pomona and Vertumnus
U A Fanthorpe
Always a must visit and never disappoints – how could it. Such skill here and wonderful planting. The gunnera explode by the Lower Moat . . .
. . . strong colour contrasts in the Long Border.
Homes for wildlife are evident – this in the Orchard. Plant habits are also evident – from afar – with arching stems of grasses fill the background behind thrusting torchlike growths of Verbascum . . .
. . . simple stuff but also respect and love for the plants grown. That’s the clue . . . and another post on this garden in winter here.
Luxurious man, to bring his vice in use,
Did after him the world seduce,
And from the fields the flowers and plants allure,
Where nature was most plain and pure.
He first enclosed within the gardens square
A dead and standing pool of air,
And a more luscious earth for them did knead,
Which stupified them while it fed.
The pink grew then as double as his mind;
The nutriment did change the kind.
With strange perfumes he did the roses taint,
And flowers themselves were taught to paint.
The tulip, white, did for complexion seek,
And learned to interline its cheek:
Its onion root they then so high did hold,
That one was for a meadow sold.
Another world was searched, through oceans new,
To find the Marvel of Peru.
And yet these rarities might be allowed
To man, that sovereign thing and proud,
Had he not dealt between the bark and tree,
Forbidden mixtures there to see.
No plant now knew the stock from which it came;
He grafts upon the wild the tame:
That th’ uncertain and adulterate fruit
Might put the palate in dispute.
His green seraglio has its eunuchs too,
Lest any tyrant him outdo.
And in the cherry he does nature vex,
To procreate without a sex.
’Tis all enforced, the fountain and the grot,
While the sweet fields do lie forgot:
Where willing nature does to all dispense
A wild and fragrant innocence:
And fauns and fairies do the meadows till,
More by their presence than their skill.
Their statues, polished by some ancient hand,
May to adorn the gardens stand:
But howsoe’er the figures do excel,
The gods themselves with us do dwell. Andrew Marvell
July again, but only the first day of the month, and I see that visits here are frequent in July. This year, however, a swathe of echium vulgare (Viper’s Bugloss) has covered the landscape in the East Sussex border with Kent giving an intense blue shawl across the verges and pebbled landscape. At Dungeness today the magenta flowers of everlasting beach pea, Lathyrus japonica, claim attention.
The land and planting around Prospect Cottage looked well tended – almost immaculate – with yellow horned poppy and echium harmonising in informal and natural groupings. The yellow painted timber work on the cottage is freshly painted . . .
“O Paradise dressed in light, you dissolve into the night” Jarman
but there is still, quite rightfully, a feeling of ‘you can look but please do not disturb’ . . .
the beach opposite has been managed and cleaned – not too much. Timber and metal detritus are visible but just enough . . . someone’s been doing immense house work here.
The Lathyrus combines to produce a delicate soft pink strain. This is a quite lovely and special landscape – a tad gentrified, as is the cse nowadays – and/but long may it develop.
The Sun Rising
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices,
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.John Donne
Sometimes the continuous present of life becomes relentless making it difficult to step off. On looking back at posts done – and so few – over the last 24 months, that has happened here . . . but enough soul searching and time to reconsolidate. Strangely the desire and principal reason to visit the gardens of Fort St André in Villeneuve-lez-Avignon was to experience the flowering of the roses. Hélas I discovered on this crucial and much delayed visit that the roses had disappointed so much over the years that they had been pulled out . . . so no roses to admire but much else to discover and appreciate.
Such as a small town park – natural and informal in feel – with 360 degree views spanning the Fort to the north, as above, and the Rhone below Mont Ventoux to the east; Avignon to the south and the Alpilles to the west.
Wandering through the town, there is much to enjoy . . . including the planting of Acanthus. Thoughts of the forum in Rome where Acanthus grew in lavish abandon flooded back from memories of more than thirty years ago.
The gardens are terraced so panoramic views can’t be ignored. Close up compositions also invite some study. Not herms as such but rather classical forms with a whimsical character.
Magnificant vaults support the exterior terraces . . .
. . . views through the access frame the compositions of evergreen planting. Apparently the roses struggled within the setting here of extreme exposure to the winds hurtling down the Rhone with the elevated cold position and also the poor soil structure on the rock form base. Some trees show their struggle with the climate but others have seeded, settled and occupied where they can.
There were always olive groves here. and other edible plants. The Abbaye was founded in 10C on the site where Sainte Cesaire lived before that time. She left her husband to live here in a grotto as a hermit – perhaps that rings true.
From the Chapelle . . .
. . . and into the poem. Over the years of a human life and over the centuries of periods of history.
Change
Said the sun to the moon,
You cannot stay.
Change
Says the moon to the waters,
All is flowing.
Change
Says the fields to the grass,
Seed-time and harvest,
Chaff and grain.
You must change said,
Said the worm to the bud,
Though not to a rose,
Petals fade
That wings may rise
Borne on the wind.
You are changing
said death to the maiden, your wan face
To memory, to beauty.
Are you ready to change?
Says the thought to the heart, to let her pass
All your life long
For the unknown, the unborn
In the alchemy
Of the world’s dream?
You will change,
says the stars to the sun,
Says the night to the stars. Kathleen Raine Change
terrain 