Mar 11 2012

Normandy – the not so good

In fact, the Bad and the Ugly. What happens when you let a friend supposedly take care of your property for a decade… All your stuff goes into an outside building that fell apart. Your very beautiful Mme Isaac Pereire climbing rose hacked down. It was planted over 10 years ago: should have covered the entire façade of the house by now. The invasion of the neighbors, who thought nothing of having everything torn down between your property and theirs, just so they wouldn’t have to look at the “eyesore”, and also so that their horse could go into your property easily…. As obviously their beautiful “green” in front of their chateau can’t be used to graze horses.

It’s not the absolute value of the kids’ bikes and tricycles and toys, the appliances, the furniture still full of clothes, the lamps, the heater that are now ruined…. it’s the principle. Somebody else used your house for 10 years to store their personal furniture and goods, nice and dry and secure, so that bailiffs wouldn’t be able to take it away in a nasty 18-year divorce proceeding. Meanwhile, the things in the house, which did belong to somebody, got tossed out to rot quietly in the Normandy humidity.

Final small detail here: the outbuilding was also being squatted by offspring of Shelob when we finally broke it open and went in. Nice.

 

 


Mar 11 2012

Normandy – The Good

Reasons why it’s nice to be here, in fact.  The daffodils that I planted years ago somehow spread and migrated over the rest of the property… or maybe got dug up and the bulbs naturalized elsewhere. First tree in bloom… A green box full of aromatic herbs bought in Dives yesterday: flat parsley, thyme, rosemary, chives, oregano, mint bergamotte – just like in Italy!


Aug 13 2010

Adela and Nicholas’s Wedding Reception: Prague, 26 June 2010


Feb 12 2010

More snow in Rome: at the FAO

Just before noon today. The Palatino and Circus Maximus as you have never seen them.

© Judith Crews, 2010


Feb 12 2010

Holy Blizzard! Snow in Rome

at 7.30 a.m.

© Judith Crews, 2010