Last night we visited a friend a few towns away and drove in the dusky landscape visiting locals Manoirs and Chateaus. The evening light played softly on the landscape of sunflower crops and corn fields, meandering around townships and orchards. Tree-lined roads lead up to remarkable properties in their vintage splendeur of tall stone barns and castles and pigeon-houses tucked behind over-growth. Roses and creeping vines, turrets with slate tiles slipping to balance precariously on the edge of now and hundreds of years ago. These are the places of Wuthering Heights and Lady Chatterly's Lover! Lands of great fables and stories! Rich in deep history and landscape. The small windows of the turrets are so Repunzelesque I prayed princesses still lived in them, pining over lost lovers.

Its not really the fancy Chateau that you can imagine with tidy,manicured gardens, its the ones tucked away and hugged by forests that invoke the romantic and literary in an on-looker. Held together by vine and the tender-hands of peasants for countless years, the shadows in between garden and building stir the imagination! Exploring these lands the past few days in varying times of the day, and eating produce from the local soil has given me the gift of feeling the place and its essence.

A few days ago we wandered with an animated sculptor friend in another town-not-so-far-away, through a misty afternoon after a feast of cheeses and cabbage-from-the-garden salad. We stood looking into a green river rushing down into dark willow-shaded corners of the landscape on an old stone bridge. The river recalled a painting by Millais, Ophelia, adding to the cultural language of the landscape.

An enclosed statue of Mary sat protecting the bridge and perhaps the river also, and as we watched the drizzle make planets on the water surface the ladies discussed the pagan activity still active in the area. Little did I know, but probably have known and forgotten, that the french countryside and in that dark soil, runs a deep histoire of pagan tradition. Witchcraft and Druid sights scatter around water-sources and stone. Churches placed directly on-top of sacred spots of ceremony or significance. This conversation added to the garden of charm and enchantment already growing in the predictably romantic-leaning soil of my imaginings.

So last night, sharing our Zuchinni dishes (which we ate with some bread we picked up from a local organic bread-making farm, yum!) in the recently acquired prespitary home-to-be of another expat friend and her full-bellied, garden-handed French boyfriend, I got to see the transformation occurring of an old building and its gardens. Glimpses of what-was, the stone work and charred back-walls of fireplaces. The evidence of many lives. The high garden walls and gnarled trees. After the meal and trying to pick up on some french conversation, ( the soup was delicious!) I wandered the grounds with the evening light softening the grasses and poplars, and walked down to the rivers-edge, soaking up the sweet scents of freshly-turned soil and flowers on the air. My daily meditation, which I did earlier while the others discussed kitchen arrangements, was filled with these scents, and the warm and chirpy atmosphere of sparrow play. Such comfort from elements is something Zana and I dreamed of in India where these harmonies were disappearing rapidly from life and tradition. What a relief to feel what is important. Thankyou India!

Ps.

Just went for a walk in the woods. I anticipated bumping into a hedgehog, a badger or a farmer. No-one crossed my path! The sparrows played up ahead, darting through blackberry bushes and saplings. Crickets rustled in the dandilion. And then, as i was emerging from the edge of the woods, a clearing on a road near a Chateau, which made me wonder what kind of things this back track has been used for over the centuries, I spotted a beautiful male spotted deer standing in a beam of sunlight against a gnarled old fallen tree. We held gazes for a while as he looked like a vision. Then he wandered over and showed me his lady and baby standing nose-to-nose in the shade. A splendid sight!