enter the magnolia

Do you remember this photo I showed you in March of the snowdrops in my garden, 

Well look what's happened.  Enter the magnolia!  The warm weather yesterday brought the first flowers out.

I'm actually not that good at what the gardening books call 'year-round interest', but in this case nature does all the work for me!  My kind of gardening!

thank you bella

Thank you so much to Bella  of The Art of Living Beautifully for this award, my first ever!!  A really wonderful surprise, I am very touched.  Apparently the rules for this award are to divulge 7 things about myself and then pass it on  to seven other blogs.  This has required thought and preparation, believe me!

Here goes:

I wish I had been born about 100 years earlier than I was.  I would have loved to have been a European in Africa at the turn of the century.

I listen to BBC Radio 4 a great deal, mostly in the kitchen and in my car.

I adore painting with children.

I write books for children,  two published so far and more on the way

I love to watch musical comedies

I regret not riding better than I do

I love to throw really good dinner parties

Here's who I would like to pass the award on to.  There are so many to choose from , so many I love to visit regularly and who certainly deserve all sorts of awards, but for this, my first, I wanted to pick out some new bloggers like myself (you all remember what it was like to get going, every new visitor counts)  and some that we don't often see on blog rolls.  I hope this thrills them as much as mine did me, and that it will let you,  regular friends,  discover a couple of blogs you may not yet know. 

lovely Italian Francesca at passionedeco

Celine and her wonderful paintings at celine cholets aquarelles 

Karyn who has just started at the beautiful Hope Island

Dash, a fellow brit and her French Sampler

another brit in France, Sarah at St Bloggie

Aurelia at   dentelles oxydees, a very clever French girl with a serious eye for detail

                                                                                                                                                                         Laeriss at  un coeur en provence,    you don't get more French than this

and of course a huge thank you to all of you who visit me regularly, and make me smile with your kind and thoughtful comments.

I wandered lonely

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth

Written 1804

England's most popular poem

photo 1 here  2 here

a helping hand

A friend of ours has recently bought a beautiful property near here.  He is in the ideal position of being able to restyle, rewire, redecorate ... before moving in , and best of all, he has asked me to give him a hand with ideas.

So I wondered, if it were you, what would you suggest?  Here are the facts,  the house is similar in style to ours, what they call "une maison de maitre" here.  Ceiling height about 2.7m, 8 foot.  Wooden flooring throughout except for the dining and kitchen area which have traditional black and white tiles.   Nice wide staircase.

The friend, a chic 40ish year old Frenchman, lives alone, but entertains often, both professionaly and socially. He's coming from a smaller property, bringing some lovely furniture with him , mixture of modern and antique, and will be buying more to furnish this bigger living area.

He wants it to look chic yet comfortable, masculine but not forbidding.  The other and very important element to bear in mind is his huge art collection, some sculptures, mostly paintings alot of which are quite modern and some fairly bright in colour.  Also don't forget that we have a very mixed climate here, cold grey winters (have I already mentioned that?...) and pleasant light summers.

So here's what I'm thinking, but I'd love to know what you would do.  Do leave me some ideas please.

To leave him the visual space for his art I wanted to suggest a black and white palette, with touches of bright colour here and there.

I've always thought that dark dining rooms feel luxurious and elegant, in his case the room is north facing, I like this idea.

He's not afraid of rich fabric, or fancy finishings.

He's lucky to already have the space for a huge en suite bathroom, just needs to redo the plumbing

 

It's fun to have several bedrooms to furnish, I'd happily be invited as a house guest to either of these!

So tell me, do you think I'm totally on the wrong track?

photos 1,2,3,4,6  david duncan livingstone,  5,10 ralph lauren, 7,8,9,13 designers guild, 11 hgtv

when I grow up - my garden

One day, when I grow up, I will have a perfect garden, where everything is so incredibly perfect and beautiful that I will never muddy my shoes or dirty my fingernails.

 

I will float around, effortlessly finding the time to make ecologically friendly pots for my seedlings

 

My 'nécessaire de jardin' will be kept to hand in a beautiful belt of various sized pockets

My tools will never get rusty, or bent, and they will never ever  -perish the thought -  accidentally land on the compost heap.

My tomatoes will not know the meaning of the words  blight,  undersized, flavourless or ordinary

my pots will be coordinated to the shades of flowers in season which will in turn be coordinated to current fashion

and I will carry a secateur in a perfect gardening bag in case the worst happens and  I come across a stray branch

One day!

photos  garden, potting tool, garden equipment

Our Friend Alberto

We have had a lot of fun things happen in our garden,  children's tea parties, grown-up's dinner parties, treasure hunts, Easter egg hunts, pony races, three legged races, three-legged pony races (no I'm kidding) charity lunches, Christmas fairs .....   but of them all, I hold a very special place in my heart for the days when our friend Alberto came to paint.

When Alberto came to paint I would pull weeds, fix garden furniture, brush the dog .... anything that meant I could spend as much time as possible in the garden watching his pictures grow, and listening to him chat about everything and nothing in particular in his delicious rolling Brazilian accent.

Watching any artist paint is  hypnotic, and Alberto's colourful, busy, Brazilian style is particularly fascinating.

He'd turn up on his bike with easel, huge canvases, and a lot more stacked into an old cart  attached to the back of the bike.  When he left at the end of the day, we'd creep into the barn and look again at the canvases he'd left to dry.

He painted all along the valley, often besides the river, and today there are pictures of the vallée de l'Eure, by Alberto, hung in houses all over the world.

For the moment he's back in Brazil, where he's done some fantastic urban scenes, and has also returned to one of his favourite themes - pianos.   Recently he created a huge mosaic for an underground station.

We are looking forward to him coming back to stay one day,  there's an easel waiting here for him.

If you'd like to see more of his work, visit his website here.

I love etsy

I am so excited, I made my first sale on etsy today, and I need to celebrate!  What better way than to feature a couple of other etsy sellers whose stuff I like.  I know it's stating the obvious but etsy is an amazing tool.  It enables so many people, particularly women, to sell from home to a world wide market.  I love it!

I adore this painting, it is fresh and happy.  What's more  

we need to protect our bees, they're good for our planet.

I've always loved pincushions, they make mending more 

fun and this one is particularly pretty.

Some people are very clever at wrapping gifts with ribbons and 

fancy paper,these labels are so sweet, they'd look

great even against a plain paper wrapping.

Voila, some retail therapy for your weekend, have a great one!

photos.  bees,  pincushion,  tags