Sunday, June 7, 2015

Painting finished. Bird Identified




Saturday June 6, 2015
If you removed cars from three quarters of the dooryards around here, you wouldn’t know what century it was. This place is infused with, suffused with, steeped in, drenched in, enveloped in time in a way totally different from my experience of the states. Being bone idle also promotes philosophical musing. There’s not much news.  We continue living in a beautiful landscape, eating the food it provides and sleeping to the sounds of its night birds.  JP is working inside today. He has painted a few foreground wheat stalks and is putting the color into the poppies; WAIT! he’s signed it!  Wine!



Sunday, June 7, 2015
My day. We went to St Antonin Noble Val, had coffee and croissants to the accompaniment of a dark voiced singer with her accordion and found a used Oiseaux d’Europe. Our rare bird appears to be a gallinule  poule d’eau, or a moor hen. I’ll have to tell Anya.   I remember Cama talking about gallinules. I think. They are as common as dirt all through Europe, Eastern Europe and lots of Russia. So much for the lifetime list… We’ll leave the book here for the next people.  For us they will remain our favorite French bird just as the French oak, also very very very common all over Europe and beyond is our favorite tree, Quercus robur, commonly known as the English oak or pedunculate oak or French oak. It is native to most of Europe, and to Anatolia and to Israel to the Caucasus, and also to parts of North Africa. We are not alone in our preference. It is a national symbol of the Basques. Somewhere in the Pyrenees, surrounded by a fine fence, is the stump of the original oak where decisions were made. A new tree about 25 feet high is right next to it.  Maybe Fred can get us one. There are jillions of babies 2 inches high along all the edges of the fields, but I don’t think we should bring one home……

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