A Gallery of Photos: To France to Paint (Again): Abbey Gardens at Fort St-André

This is the second posting of four featuring the photos I took (plus some art work) of both the Avignon area of France as well as the vineyard country around Vaison-la-Romaine.  In other words:  Provence.  This was a 10-day watercolor painting trip in September with a group from our local art school.

The scenes here are all from an excursion to the nearby village of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon and the splendid 14th century Fort St-André there where one finds the gardens of a former Benedictine abbey.  The fort and gardens are across the Rhône River from Avignon but close enough to offer good views of each other.  Here, one finds terraces, pergolas, vistas, sarcophagi, steps leading off up to what appears to be an old chapel, water lilies, and various flower beds.  A wonderful place to explore or sit and reflect.  The bus ride from Avignon (on a #5 bus) only takes about fifteen minutes.   (This was my fourth visit.)

View of Fort St-André from Avignon

The old chapel

View back to the Palace of the Popes in Avignon

My friends and I stopped for lunch at a little cafe on the grounds.  I ordered what was billed as a grilled zucchini sandwich on charcoal bread.  And that's just what I got!  It was delicious.

Of course, I took my travel sketch book with me since I take it everywhere.  Here is a quick sketch of the pergola, made just before the shade I was sitting in turned to full sun in what was nearly a 90-degree day.

And these three paintings are from earlier visits--one plein aire and two painted later from photos I took.

View of the fort from the neighboring Carthusian monastery dating from the middle ages

Cypress and olive trees, plein aire

These photos and paintings are my property and may not be reproduced by anyone else.

A Gallery of Photos: To France to Paint (Again): Avignon

Looking across the Rhône to Avignon

As described in this blog, just a year ago, mid-October, I joined a group of local watercolor painters to take part in a week's painting trip to Provence. Can heaven provide any better activity in any better locale, I asked myself. Then, when the week was over and we Vermonters were home again, I promised myself that I would go again this year since the organizers were planning a repeat trip.  (In fact, half of last year's group decided to return.)

And that is just what I have now done, having arrived home just a few days ago.  This second trip was on a par with the glories of the first.  By that I mean:  great weather, gorgeous scenery, great co-painters, fabulous food and Côtes du Rhône wines.  And this time, going a month earlier, we hit upon the vendange, the grape harvesting.

Our organizers also added a few pre-trip days in Avignon so that we could get over jet lag before embarking on our week of painting in Provence's nearby Vaison-la-Romaine, a small town that boasts Roman ruins along with an entire medieval quarter.

So, I begin this series of four postings with a view of Avignon, a place that became a well-loved town back in the days when my husband was alive and our young daughter was getting a good view of the world as she traveled with us.  We three danced on the medieval Saint-Bénézet bridge as we sang "Sur le pont d'Avignon," attended the Avignon theater, film, and music festival, witnessed the Bastille Day fireworks.  So, one can well imagine that I was especially anxious to re-new old memories when I learned that Avignon had been added to this year's itinerary.

This trip, we stayed close in, in the sweet little Hotel Regina on the Place de l'Horloge, just near the Palais des Papes, the great medieval gothic Palace of the Popes, there since the 14th century when the papacy split between Rome and France.

To place it properly, Avignon is an hour's drive north of the Mediterranean city of Marseille.  Vaison-la-Romaine is another hour northeast of that, still in the Rhône River region.

Palace of the Popes

Looking up at the Palace of the Popes

Looking toward the Palace from the town across the river

Handsome plane trees and building

Note the trompe l'oeil painted in the upper window

Typical residence

Our hotel

Cups, cups, cups in a coffee and tea shop

Delightfully tempting pastries

Pork tenderloin and friends

This happened to be the very spot where our van's GPS said Avignon's TGV train station was located.  The GPS was subsequently given a scolding and turned off.  This is, of course, the middle of the Rhône River just a few miles down from the heart of Avignon.

Future postings:
Number 2:  Benedictine Abbey Gardens in Fort Saint-André, Villeneuve-lès-Avignon
Number 3:  Vaison-la-Romaine
Number 4:  Neighboring towns

A Gallery of Photos: Blue

The color of the sky and sea.  Of distance.  Of eyes (some eyes) and the interior of glaciers.  Though in Homer's day, the sea was described as "wine-dark" as there wasn't then a word for blue, except with the Egyptians who made a blue dye.  (See my blog posting about this, "Seeing Blue," dated January 16, 2016.) Blue, too, is a primary color along with yellow and red, at least in pigment.

Oahu

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Buttons

Early morning in Vermont

Registan square, Samarkand

Alfred Stevens, "A Duchess (The Blue Dress)" 1866 in the Clark Art Institute*

How colors fade into blue as they recede

Outdoor art in Santa Fe

Solving the clothes drying problem in Aigues-Mortes, France

Muscat, capital of Oman, in 1968

Islamic design in the Shahi Zinda necropolis complex, Samarkand

*With thanks to the Clark Art Institute for letting me take a photograph of this painting.

Canoeing on the Retreat Meadows

Where the West River and the Meadows join

A bit of explanation may be appreciated since one doesn't usually canoe on meadows.  But these are water-meadows.  And non-seasonal at that.  What was once prime farmland flooded when a certain dam was completed in 1909.  Now, winter, those same lake-like "meadows" are covered with ice-fishing shacks.  Summer, they host kayaks and canoes.  They are called the Retreat Meadows because they are adjacent to the Brattleboro Retreat, a hospital complex for mental health and addictions.

What happens here geographically is that two rivers meet--the great Connecticut, the boundary (here) between Vermont and New Hampshire, and the lesser but exciting West River that can thunder down the slopes and produce such disasters as Hurricane Irene's destruction when something like 13 Vermont towns/villages were isolated from any traffic in or out (other than helicopter) because our lovely "babbling" rivers, of which this was one, brought on havoc!  Though adjacent to the Connecticut, the meadows are more a part of the West River.

What the West River looks like when said to be "babbling."

Okay ... so some weeks ago, seeing summer flee, as it is prone to do, having celebrated the Fourth of July, knowing that Labor Day was imminent, I told a certain member of the family that before summer was over, I wanted us to go canoeing ... and especially since it had been several years since we had last been.

So we picked yesterday to go.  Good temperatures--mid-70s.  A bit of cloud cover so we wouldn't fry out on the water.  A Sunday when she and her little ones weren't otherwise engaged.  We met up at the canoe rental spot, paid our $25 for one hour, and embarked.  It turned out to be the 12- and 8-year olds' first canoe trip. So she gave them an on-the-spot tutorial in rowing since both wanted to be engaged in this fun family activity.

It was a perfect day--paddling away, enjoying ourselves, catching glimpses of Canada geese, ducks, an egret (or was it a heron?), curly water-weeds, and other Sunday folks out on the meadows with the sense that the water was so shallow, the draft of the canoe so slight, that one could step out and not be submerged.

Fishing

What The Meadows will look like in two months

High Summer

"It's been dry, dry, then hot, hot, then wet, wet."  So one of my vendor friends at the farmers market summed up our summer so far.  And right now the "wet wet" is mixed with more "hot hot."  After living in this house for more than 20 years, I was finally compelled to buy an AC window unit to at least cool part of my upstairs.  The downstairs has to rely on pulled window shades plus a fan.  But I still get in the car and use its AC as I drive around.  And I still visit the library with its comfy chairs and just-right temperature.

But winter sets in with such a vengeance that I feel it's important to appreciate summer while we have it ... with its green green days as that color overtakes everything from our trillions of trees to the greenish skies that appear with the approach of a good crashing thunderstorm.

I personally prefer the dry-dry to the wet-wet whether it's hot-hot or not. But those non-humid days are rare--belonging to country far west of here. We in the northeast are part of the high-humidity crowd.  It can be debilitating and make us grumpy.  Or send us off to the nearest lake or river for boating and swimming because that's one thing we do have around here: water.

Here are some of our summer views:

Getting ready for the canoe race

Afternoon party

For when the party crowd is ready to sit

The Fourth, bocce balls and all

Hammock and honey