Acte 4: Pastorale (apologies to Beethoven)

In spite of its proximity to Paris, and possibly being somewhat better off with a higher level of employment, much of the area we have traversed around the Île-de-France looks no less desolate than the villages down south. The villages are for the most part closed up, with no signs of life, not even an elderly person dozing on a seat (although that may in part be due to the inclement weather), or a child playing in a garden. There are no people, no shops, no restaurants. Just nothing but dingy dwellings with shutters tight-closed. However, slightly further north in the Somme and on the edge of Normandy, things are a little better. The neat northern brick architecture looks in better condition, as do the half-timbered houses and barns. There are even people to be seen, villages with boulangeries and a restaurant or two offering those famous French menus with three courses for €12.

There’s always a stand-out garden – we thought we had found it at Séricourt, a garden that has just grown over time. But unlike Topsy, it has had an overall plan, and each new part blends seamlessly with the rest. Located in the Somme, it has taken as its central theme the idea of warriors and war, and while there are some references to World War One, executed with great subtlety and sensitivity, such as the Field of Battle, full of huge bomb craters (OH&S would have a field day here!), the standing warriors of Yew were inspired by the Terracotta Army in China, and the extraordinary topiaried heads by the statues on Easter Island. At every turn there is a view or a vista, both within a particular garden or into another. But it is in a fantasy garden that the owners have demonstrated the true depth of their talents – a topiary garden filled with some 400 different forms of topiary, created from Box, Yew, Juniper and other evergreens, some with a touch of whimsy, such as the salon with sofas and a bottle and glasses on the table, others more geometric, a testament to someone’s eye and skill with the shears, but all blending harmoniously together to create a panoply of still-lifes as one progresses through the garden.

Filled with awe, and already feeling it had been a very good day indeed (particularly as our first stop had been a visit to a master confisier in Amiens where we had stocked us on delicious Amiens macarons and confectionary), we drove further north to Maizicourt. Created over a 25-year period, this very personal garden has been created around a tiny, but perfect, château by a diminutive powerhouse of a woman, who, throughout our visit, scurried about the 8 hectare garden tidying up and apologising that parts of the garden were a bit “dirty”. The compact potager, laid out as a formal parterre, has a petite arbour in the centre, just the right size (and height for the owner), and artistically-placed clumps of colour - clouds of hydrangeas smothered in saucers of pink or blue or pretty annuals.

While not being a particular fan of pink, I’d have to admit the soft pinks perfectly complemented the brick and stone of the château and its picturesque outbuildings.

The cloister garden was an interesting fusion of mediaeval, Islamic and contemporary design. Here the traditional hedging materials of box and yew have been combined with bamboo, grasses and arum lilies, and more commonly-used perennials such as erigeron, paeonies and hosta to create a soft, almost romantic tranquil space with a slightly exotic feel.

The last surprise (well, to me anyway, because my copy of the September Gardens Illustrated is still firmly wrapped in its plastic cover) was Le Jardin Plume, a contemporary garden featuring, … you guessed it, … lots of grasses, but not quite as you might expect. The main part of the garden consisted of millimetre-correct square blocks of plantings, with die-straight edging, separated by immaculately mown grass paths. The blocks nearest the house had a fruit tree at the centre, surrounded by grasses and perennial, while the blocks further away had just grasses dotted with a few perennials. From the house, the manicured garden slowly disappeared into the landscape beyond. There were also a number of themed gardens that flowed across the front of the house in a horse-shoe, with the most imaginatively and spectacular combinations of grasses and perennials. Definitely food for thought …

I know I have mentioned in previous despatches the decorated rond-points, but until now have had no documentary evidence, since stopping on a roundabout, as you can imagine, is a little difficult. However, this time we took a leaf out of the French drivers’ book and pulled over. The floral car is situated near the huge Renault factory not far from Pontoise, on the north-western outskirts of Paris, while the other, complete with insect hotel is somewhere to the south of Paris. 

As always, there have been lots of lovely people along the way – Mme Dauphin – both she and her little gite south of Paris were an absolute delight, and will not be quickly forgotten thanks to the overpowering fragrance (and I use that term loosely) of her washing powder left in our clothes; our charming hosts at that paradise in the south – Camon; the kind people in the shops who waited patiently while our Eurobabble coalesced into something approximating French and who occasionally slipped an extra something into the bag; and at the last garden on the last day, the lovely couple who raided the soft fruit bushes to give us a taste of their more unusual produce such as wineberries and who would have happily sent us home with armfuls of cuttings had they been allowed … What a lot of great memories.

À bientôt,

Su

Acte 3: "The Sound of Music" …. Oops! We’re in France ….

Un Suffisance de Baggage

You can tell when you’re down south – the D-roads are narrower and there’s no centre line any more. But there’s plenty of sunshine and fresh air, and the eau de fag has been replaced by the earthy smell of eau de poo (of the bovine kind) and the fragrance of freshly-cut hay. Along the verges there are still some heads of cow parsley, determinedly thrusting upwards in defiance of the farmers slashing them to the ground in late spring. Here and there a few poppies still bloom, but it’s a bit late for them. Across the patchwork of green, golden yellow and brown fields, the towering peaks of the  Pyrenees rear up, some still with the remains of their white mantles of snow clinging to their tips. The corn is just reaching knee-height, while every now and again yellow saucers pop up in a sea of green. Another week and the fields of sunflowers will be bright yellow … The wheat is almost ready to harvest; you can see the breeze ruffle its surface, leaving the heads nodding gently as if in agreement. In the distance raptors wheel and float, taking advantage of the warm updraughts, while scanning the fields for an easy prey. In the villages, despite the closed shutters and the slight look of abandonment, tall hollyhocks bloom profusely in the most inhospitable places, making a mockery of my futile efforts to grow them in my perennial border, while carefully tended plots of vegetables show an early promise of a bountiful harvest.

Déja Vu dans le Salon

It’s here at Camon where this adventure started twelve months ago, where, sitting after dinner in the 18^th century salon and feeling rather mellow, we hit upon the idea of travelling en famille one more time. And what a pleasure it has been – to sit and have dinner together each night is such a precious luxury. And for us to share some of the things we love about Camon - A visit to the weekly market at Mirepoix, where everything imaginable is offered for sale. The rumpled looking leather worker with the cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth who makes belts to measure on the spot, while next door a wiry  cutler bicycles away furiously on his wooden grinder, the rhythmic thump of the pedals accompanying the whine of a knife on the stone. And then there’s the most wonderful fragrances wafting through the air – the smoked saucisson and air-dried hams, the ripe cheeses and the divine flat peaches, and the sweet, sticky smell of huge, thick wheels of nougat, spread out in a rainbow of pastel shades, bursting with fruit and nuts and sold in huge wedges, wrapped carefully in waxed paper.

Le Bathroom des Parents

Transfixed by Le World Cup

Roquefixade

There was also a visit to La Roquefixade, where somehow we got tangled up in a serious bike race – with a few hair-raising moments for the driver and some expletives from a couple of riders 

…. But the stress and the subsequent climb in the sticky heat were worth the view …

And finally a long march in the freezing cold, pitch black caves to see the magical prehistoric paintings again.

James surveys the peak at Roquefixade

Our Niche Goddess

Château de Foix

We never fail to be surprised by the treasures we unearth, or the stories behind them – usually found quite by accident, and very much enjoyed. In this case it was the Château des Fiches, one of life’s pleasurable surprises. Not far from Camon, but off the beaten track, at the end of a curving pot-holed drive, it was not clear that we had indeed arrived anywhere but at a ruin. A small, quite plain two-storey building, desperately in need of repair, with two small wings of indeterminate age stood before us. A door that had seen better days opened on to a tiled hall, where a woman, who had perhaps also seen better days, was waiting for custom. We were it. She turned out to be part of the family, and took us on a wonderfully personal tour of first the library, with its travelling commode shaped like a pile of books on a small table and the earliest book dating from the early 1500’s; then the spacious kitchen from the 1600’s, still with its original fireplace, complete with attachments for the spit and a potager – a stove for making soup. And then upstairs via the oak stairs to see the pièce de résistance– a room with the most amazing painted ceiling we have ever seen. Picture a vast room, with all but one of its windows shuttered, with dusty terracotta tiles on the floor, stained plastered walls and a few decidedly shabby pieces of furniture dotted forlornly about the room, and above, an almost mediaeval ceiling made of many huge beams running across the room, with narrow spaces between them. On every beam, beautifully painted, with almost perfect detail, there was an unbelievable menagerie of all kinds of birds and beasts, with a unicorn and some dragons adding a few touches of fantasy. They were all linked together by rococco swirls and curlicues and interspersed by cartouches showing everyday country scenes. There are no clues as to the provenance of the master painter (and most likely an assistant), other than an over-sized snail that appears in some of the cartouches and it seems that there are no other ceilings in existence like this one. But what is even more amazing is that in the room next door where the ceiling fell down, another ceiling has been revealed, this time done in the style of Delft ceramics … and there are perhaps others in the house waiting to be revealed, although sadly, due to lack of finances, they are not likely to be found.

And so it’s back to Paris (because as we all know, all roads lead to Paris – going cross-country here is not allowed), so we can all go somewhere else … Katja to München, James and Estee to London and we will explore the Île-de-France …

À bientôt,

Su

Acte 2: Gaîté Parisienne

Aaaah Paris! Full of gloire, histoire, and …. people. Too many of them, in fact.

Alighting the train from Düsseldorf at the Gare du Nord, one’s senses are immediately assaulted by the eau de fag and the shouting and jostling of the milling crowds. Outside the cacophony of car horns adds to the general mêlée as our taxi drivers cheerfully launch themselves (and us) with gusto into the swirling maelstrom better known as Friday afternoon peak hour, where every driver behaves as a charioteer at the Circus Maximus (and I thought the Roman drivers were bad …), determined to fight for every inch of ground, even if it means blocking up every intersection. Driving in Paris is inadvisable at the best of times, with drivers practising the Giant Slalom down narrow streets full of parked cars and driving just millimetres away from the car in front, but peak hour on a Friday afternoon is clearly the ultimate challenge, with the entanglements at the intersections skilfully avoided by racing down narrow backstreets at breakneck speed and careening wildly around corners to catch the lights, with our piles of luggage shifting alarmingly around us. Somewhat white-knuckled, but thankful to be in one piece, we arrived at our lodgings – someone’s apartment – in the leafy suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. 

At this point I can hear those of you who are particularly on the ball wondering why these missives are entitled “A Garden Reverie”, and not “The Famous Five go Forth” or some such title (With apologies to Enid Blyton). Well, the point of going to Paris for two of us, apart from spending time with the children, was to “discover” the hidden gardens of Paris (which you might suggest is a bit of a waste of time, as some other clever person has already done it) – although as we discovered, some are so well-hidden that they are almost impossible to find, while others, when standing and looking at them, might not be immediately obviously a garden at all. But there are some gems to be found, even though they necessitated a map, a compass and a packed lunch, and we’ve added a few of our own to the list.

The first was the Parc du Bagatelle, cunningly hidden in the middle of the vast Bois du Boulogne (and by vast, I do mean vast, with big trees and deep shadows of the Red Riding Hood variety), far from any Metro station (of course – Madame is supposed to be conveyed there in her carriage …), necessitating a long march just to find the entrance. It was, however, worth the effort. As its name suggests, the park is a mere “trifle”, built at vast expense as the result of a bet between Marie Antoinette and her brother-in-law, and completed, together with the chateau, in less than 70 days. It now has a huge collection of roses, overseen by a pretty little pagoda-like belvedere and a charming, wedge-shaped potager. The gorgeous views were complemented by the soft sounds of a piano concert in the Orangerie nearby.

The second park is the Park du Bercy, near the Gare de Lyon, built on the site of an old wine entrepôt. It has to be said that the French, with their sense of style, do new urban parks and gardens extremely well, with a certain unity of theme and design and attention to detail that designers in Australia can only dream about. Despite only being about 20 years old, it has a lot of remarkably tall trees. The designers left the rail tracks that ran through the site, along with the cobbled streets, and then carried the idea of the rails through the different parts of the park, which helps to pull it together, because it is sliced in half by a major road. 

Where the buildings stood, different rooms have been created, which offer diverse spaces for a range of uses. At one end of the park, the cave-like storage areas have been retained and turned into a shopping and café precinct, while at the other are playing fields.

Le Backyard

The owners of our apartment were also clearly into gardens, and we much enjoyed eating our eye-wateringly expensive “yellow” chicken from the local butchers in the private minimalist garden, decorated with festoons of washing, and overlooked by at least a dozen apartments. 

La Tomate

While yellow chickens are exceedingly delicious, no trip to Paris for us would be complete without one night out – at Atelier Joël Robuchon, where four hungry souls braved the eleven-course menu …. and then moaned all the way home  …. I offer the following dishes as ideas that can be whipped up in a jiffy for your next dinner party. As every good hostess knows, the perfect meal should start with a soup. Why not try “La Tomate”, in the form of a gazpacho, with “gilded” croutons under a mustard sorbet à l’ancienne . Then there should be a fish dish. How about “La Langoustine”, grilled on a bed of celeraic puree with just a hint of Thai flavours and floating in a foamy Coral Sea. Or perhaps “Le Caviar” would be better, with a hot-cold egg cooked in maple syrup hiding under a vegetable wafer topped with caviar together with  Gravelax salmon with citrus and vodka. No French meal is complete without “Le Foie Gras" – in this case hot from the duck, with fresh cherries and almonds in a jus with a hint of hibiscus. Then to finish  the meal, how about  “Le Parfum des Iles” – a crème of fruits – passionfruit a granita of rum and a cloud of whipped coconut.

Le Caviar

La Langoustine

Le Foie Gras

Le Parfum des Iles 

Les Full tum tums

Needless to say, there wasn’t a great demand for breakfast the next morning ….

Elegant though Paris is, there are other wonderful things to see and do …. Next stop, the south-west.

À bientôt,

Su

Acte 1 - Allemande

As they say in German, “Aller Anfang ist schwer” – to begin is difficult – but it’s not the beginning that is difficult, it is where to begin. So, perhaps it is best to begin at the beginning of this garden reverie ….

Breakfast choices

I have often maintained that you can tell where you are by the noise and smells around you. This time, you could be forgiven for thinking you were deep in a forest, not a city, Düsseldorf actually, where its normally restrained tempo is now punctuated by the shrill concert of out-of-tune chainsaws and the deep rumble of heavy vehicles. The air is redolent not of eau de diesel or filter coffee, but of freshly-sawn wood and dried leaves. A few days before our arrival, Hurricane Ela swept across the city, wreaking havoc and felling huge trees like dominoes, twisting them out of the ground like corks or snapping them off like celery stalks.

The House Elf cleans up

Despite the damage, and the consequent necessary shelving of our garden visiting plans, and despite the on-going construction in the city centre, Düsseldorf (and probably Germany) has changed little since last we visited. Things are still orderly – the baggage arrived agonisingly slowly but neatly spaced on the conveyor belt; there are still lots of obvious rules and regulations; the hotel rooms had a certain severity that was suggestive of the building’s former use as a children’s home and the dozens of spreads and jams in the breakfast room were all neatly lined up like soldiers with labels front and centre. The supermarkets still sell pre-composted vegetables, and clearly have deliveries just once a week – the shelves being somewhat empty by the end of the weekend. And everywhere there are sweets – on the counters, on the pillows, in the breakfast room and in their own large department in each tiny supermarket. While in a sporty mood thanks to the World Cup (of which I confess to having seen far too many matches …), the Germans have invented a new sport – Kassenstehen – standing in line at the cash register. They have solved the problem of poor service in their department stores in a single blow by now delivering no service at all and having only one register per floor …

Printen - Yum!

The trip to Germany was not just meant to be a garden reverie, but also a trip down memory lane for the Lairds and Laird-Wahs. And so it was that Estee has been introduced to the German afternoon tea, courtesy of friends, who provided an eye-popping spread of at least ten different kinds of cake; the German Konditerei, where huge, painstakingly-engineered cakes cut with mathematical precision awaited the results of our deliberations, before being ferried to our table together with the afore-mentioned filter coffee or the German version of an Italian latte macchiato, a tri-coloured flavourless creation in a tall glass beaker; the best gingerbread in Germany to be found at Nobis in Aachen (Why go to Aachen to see Charlemagne’s throne when you can go to eat Printen?) and from where we nearly didn’t return after one of those heart-stopping moments when we couldn’t get the van out of the underground carpark; and German beer – Dat lekkere dropke – Düsseldorf’s famous dark beer brewed by Uerige in the Altstadt, accompanied by sausage and bread, and where the glasses keep on magically coming until  you wave the unusually genial waiter away (His girth attested to the fact that he no doubt had a drop or two between trips to the tables).

Dat Lekere Droppke

Best beer and company

Aachen - Am Puppenbrunnen

And then there was a trip to Köln to the Chocolate Museum, with its running fountain of molten chocolate and a Sunday drive to Kaiserswerth to the Rheinfähre -the ferry across the Rhine near where we used to live, where, after a quick stroll along the river, we repaired to the adjoining café with a large beer garden under magnificent horse chestnut trees, where we found ourselves supping on beer and matjes (fresh herring) and Sachertorte at 10.30 in the morning, much to the amusement of the waiter, who was still serving Sunday breakfast elsewhere.

And finally a trip to Holland to visit the Kröller Müller Museum, which purports to have the biggest collection of van Gogh’s outside of Amsterdam (although rather annoyingly only a few were on display), and which sits inside a national park, De Hoge Veluwe, an ancient sea, where it feels somewhat bizarre to be driving through with forest on the one hand and heathland with sand dunes still visible on the other. The wild nature of the park is in strong contrast to the obsessively neat fields and villages around it, with their brick (!) roads and where each strictly geometric brick house sits neatly on its little plot with a carefully organised and ordered garden in front. Needless to say there were many gardens sporting arresting arrangements in Dutch box. We also noted with interest that in contrast to Germany, there was no advertising for beer or cigarettes, there were no pubs, only the occasional restaurant and most of the traffic was on two wheels. I am always utterly amazed how different things can be just across the border …

And so – onwards to Paris ….

Latte - just not as we know it!

Bis bald,

Su

Breaking the diet