detritus, Le breuil. . .

the lady and her goat

I was going to write about all the houses for sale in this quiet old town - but that will have to await another day because this happened:  I looked out my front door and what should I see?  A woman walking her goat.  Yup.  On a leash, with a bell.  A goat.  You just never know what you are going to see in these parts.

doors and gates, horizons, birds and colors

I have been in France for over a week now, and it seems a good time to post. I am not going to post a view of the town from up near the orchards - if you are interested, you can look back through this blog and I am sure you will find one because I have dozens of them in my collection of pictures and I can't imagine I have not posted at least one.  It is a nice view, for sure.  I painted it yesterday.  But today, something different.
 This part of the world has had an extremely dry summer and while a lot of things - the rose bush in my  garden, for example - look much the worse for wear, the land from a distance looks quite spectacular.  I guess it takes a lot to brown down a tree, because, though grass everywhere has dried to a golden, reddish ochre, the trees retain their dark green leaves.  I know that we would all feel better in a way, if the dynamic were the other way around - the grass lush and green and the leaves on the trees starting to change to their fall colors, but there you are.  Can't have everything and I, for one, find this topsy turvy landscape rather lovely. A couple of shots, above.
 Then there are the doors.  I have only put a few photos of them up, but, believe me, there are many more where those come from.  The one that really knocks me out is the turquoise door on the rue St Anne with a strange bas-relief face in it as if someone on the other side is pressing their face through it in an effort to see what's going on outside.
  Then there are  pictures of birds, self-explanatory.  A dove sitting on a lamppost and two geese - happily eating their fill, with no idea in the world that they are destined for the Christmas table.
 And finally, colors.  You would think that a small french village would be colorful, but in the case of AC and many of the surrounding hamlets, you would be wrong.  These are dull, grey places - charming in their way - but definitely lacking in vivid color.  The doors are all painted muted shades of green and blue (but for the turquoise above), the roofs are the grayish red of the ardoise, and the people - it must be said - are also a wee bit drab.  But every so often, there is the shock of bright hue.  The orange slate of the shed, for instance, or the brilliant reds and oranges of the fattened fruits and vegetables you can see in the gardens at this time of year, even despite the drought.

Mid summer madness

Here on our road, we have no idea what the weather is like in the rest of the county because we have our own particular meteorological system.    In the winter our valley can be knee-high in blizzard-like snow, while down on the main route all will be clear and the ground bare.  Sometimes we have rain that feels like it must cover the entire world but drive over the hill, and the sky is blue and the roads are dry as a desert. This is not a well-publicized phenomenon - only the folks who live here understand how  idiosyncratic our micro-climate is and it is only these same folks - my neighbors - who also keep careful track of the wildlife count along the road.  So Tuesday was a red-letter day, both in the weather department and as far as wildlife was concerned.  The day started in thick fog.  That is, our valley started out in thick fog but a mile away on the other side of the hill (I was on my way to pick early morning berries with a friend, so I know) it was like the fog never existed.  Clear as a bell, not a cloud in the sky,  the early sunlight bright and white as if shining down from an unfiltered spotlight.    Later in  the day (and after the fog dissipated)  the cumulus clouds appeared creating the deep green, blue and white color palette typical of the most glorious days in a Delaware County summer. But it was the evening event that really set the road to buzzing - and that event happened to me.  I had just come inside from my vegetable garden which is next to the road (important fact) and had cooked myself an omelet with new zucchini, chard, basil, chervil and parsley.  And just to give you a visual of my meal, picture the green of the vegetables contrasting with eggs whose yolks were practically orange from all the good stuff the chickens ate while they roamed freely.  Anyway, I went into my library to eat and no sooner did I sit down than a movement out the front window caught the corner of my eye. And what was it?  A BEAR. On the road.  Not five feet from the garden where I had been picking greens ten minutes before. Yes.  A giant teddy bear with whom I nearly had an up close and personal encounter, waddling up the road as if he did it every day.  I tried to take a picture - to prove to myself and everyone else that the bear hadn't been a mirage or a chervil-induced hallucination and although he is in the final picture above, he is behind the bush. Really. Well if I tell you that news travels faster on this road than on the internet, I wouldn't be exaggerating.  I told my neighbor Nancy when I saw her later in the evening and by the next day the tongues were wagging.  I am now the toast of the road - the "New York women", as some call me, who has seen a bear.  Marjorie, the 90 year old matriarch of the farming dynasty at the bottom of the hill stopped by during the nightly ride  she and her husband Wilbur take in their open air farm vehicle (I don't know what you call it - part tractor, part atv, part surrey with the fringe on top) just to tell me that in all her years on this road, she had never seen a bear and that I was, indeed, a very lucky person.

brooklyn, hot summer day

OK, I think it is time to rev this blog up again.  I actually miss the writing part and though life kind of goes on as it did before (in other words, I haven't been on a safari in Africa or to a beach in Bali where the photos might be a little more dramatic), there are still some pretty cool things that I see everyday that call out for some recognition - somewhere - if only in this reader-less blog. What happened the other day was that it was deadly hot in New York and my studio had no air so it was impossible to paint and I was a little bored of the usual places in Manhattan that I go when I feel like wandering.  So I took the #2 to Brooklyn Heights, headed down and through Dumbo and Vinegar Hill (yes, that is the name of that empty and totally lovely area you find after you pass under the Manhattan Bridge) and found the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which I have always wanted to see.  And what was it like?  Well, for one thing it is huge - I walked for miles to get around it.  For another, it is slowly being transformed into a riverside industrial park so the center of it is entirely filled with shiny new buildings which are just that, shiny and new. Kind of a pity.  But all around the edges, in the parts that have not yet been renovated you can see through the old fencing into a world where the grand old brick buildings have been left to the ravages - and the beauty  - of nature. The yard must have been a stunning place in its heyday.  But now, jungles of vines, trees and wildflowers have taken over creating a sad and magical world, which I found ravishing.  The water tower in the picture above is not in the yard, but it sits like a sentinel across Flushing Avenue, itself a relic of another age.

Blue-sky day

Today turned out to be a  blue-sky day in Delaware County, but it started on the foggy side.  Foggy, but beautiful.  The bottom photo is almost devoid of color, but that is exactly the way the scene appeared - almost a study in grey.  A little while later, the color appeared.  If you look closely in the third picture from the bottom,  there are two horses out in that field.  We don't know who they belong to, actually, even though they are grazing on our land.  But that's OK.  We used to have Cecil's heifers over there until he sold all his cows. And then, for a time,  our pastures were empty. So the horses are welcome guests.  The picture second from the top  was taken inside my studio.   The light for painting today was wonky because, as shown in the top picture, the clouds swept across the sky and in front of the sun thereby changing the effect on the subjects of my paintings.  But I won't complain. Days like today are something of a gift.

hanging tough

OK, I have surrendered to facebook and started not one, but two pages - one personal and one for my work - but I am darned if I am going to give up this blog.  Not too many people read it, I know, but those who do (hello family) sometimes enjoy it.  So here are a few pictures from today's trip out to the area of Brooklyn around the Gowanus Canal.  I haven't taken pictures in a while because my camera broke, but now I have a snazzy new one and I must say it came in very handy. As you can see, there are all sorts of interesting things to shoot out there - strange sculptures, lovely old buildings, water towers, wheels and the most idiosyncratic of all, a funky little store selling "items", wedged into the side of a vast parking lot.  The picture at the top gives some idea of how pretty the canal actually is.  And how coincidental is it that the color of the bridge crossing it is exactly the same as the color of the bridges crossing the Canal St Martin in an equally edgy and eccentric quartier in Paris?