Roussillon

Roussillon was my favorite neighboring town to Lourmarin when I was a child.  It was the most far-out place, and when you went there you inevitably got dirty.  Although I was pretty prissy as a child, the type of dirty you got in Roussillon was all right with me–it wasn’t muddy blasé brown, it was bright orange.  That was a kind of dirty I could get down with.

As if the bright orange and red cliffs aren’t enough, all of the buildings in Roussillon are built with the pigmented clay that surrounds the village.  The naturally occurring ochre in the hillsides was mined until the 1930’s.  Mining has since been banned in order to protect the site from destruction.

Being in Provence inspired an obsession with crumbling old walls with plants growing out of them.  Roussillon’s reddish ones are particularly high on my list because of the red/green contrast (these pictures are so much more vibrant in original–the upload to WordPress just ruins the color).

And my favorite door, from 1678.  Well, I’m not sure about the door, but the doorway is from 1678.

If you walk to the highest point in town you find a ceramic-topped circular map of the region, with Roussillon at its center.  You’ll find similar maps in many of the neighboring towns.

Right before you reach the map at the top of the hill you’ll find the 16th century church surrounded by lavender.

The exterior is fairly simple, but there is intricateness to be found inside.  One of my favorites is the altar.

Wheat and grapes have been the primary crops of Provence since the middle ages.

The baptismal font was added in the 17th century.

I love the intricate high relief on the ceiling.  Very dramatic.

After the church we walked back through town to the cemetary, which is quite beautiful.

I like calling this guy “Eqyptian Jacques.”

It’s Raining in Rockridge

I responded to the day by going out and relieving Bloomies of some of their merchandise, lest it get damaged in the rain.  

Nothing like big bright yellow peonies (and a fun mini pineapple) to lift the rain cloud from over your head!

Color, more Sweet Peas, Scent

These tulips are HUGE!  And very open.  All of these flowers were a gift from my former employer at Bloomie’s up the street at Market Hall.  She said she bought the sweet peas just for their scent, because these bunches were especially fragrant.  They are so amazing!  So often you can barely smell the sweet peas that come out of florists, but not these; I feel like I’m smelling sweet peas for the first time!  

When I got them home I left each flower grouped in the bunch it came in because I love the strong color blocks–and I showed off the deep green of the smooth leaves and stems of the tulip with a tall clear mason jar.  

The scent revelation that these sweet peas sent me on led me to realize that the Soy Face Cream by Fresh that I sampled from Sephora (and couldn’t stomach the $42 for 1 oz.) and have been scraping from the bottom of my sample actually smells literally of sweet peas.  Sorry Fresh I don’t know where you got that soy scent, smells like sweet peas to me, but either way I’ll take it!  I might actually have to throw down the $42.  It’s just that good.

Actual size of sample container.  Note emptiness.

Homage

Never pronounce the “h;” this word sounds so much better without it.

Hot pink carnations by Birch 

“It’s got to be Timex or Rolex.”

~KRB

Perhaps in the case of carnations by Birch it’s both, but we live by KRB’s maxim all the same.  

With love, ‘Shoos

Color of the Week: Pale Salmon

It’s an official obsession.  

pale salmon-colored amaryllis: 

It will be an element of a forthcoming ARL arrangement.  I got some wild and disparate elements for an upcoming design (fingers crossed that it works out).  I’ve been feeling really inspired by the work coming out of Saipua–it’s just so unexpected and at the same time so beautiful.  We’ll see if I can pull it off. 

Cream and Pale-Salmon-Centered Daffodils

Brighten up the gray February.

Sud de France

Recently, when I think about how I would rather not go to work, tomorrow, this week, for the month of February, or ever, I browse vacation rentals in the Luberon.  Tonight’s pipe dream is a little studio near/in Roussillon.  Humble, but a very livable love nest if you ask me.  

When I was in 6th grade we wrote weekly essays that we would sometimes be called upon to read aloud in front of the class.  No one believes me, but I was shy till a certain age, and feared beyond any fear having to stand and read my essay.  One week, when we had been assigned to write about a vacation or far away place, I was called upon to read.  My essay was about the vibrantly colored chalky hills of Roussillon–literally bright red, ochre, and sometimes purple–which I visited when staying with my grandmother in nearby Lourmarin.  

My teacher accused me of lying and publicly admonished me for fabricating a fiction when the assignment was autobiography.  Had it been nine or ten years later I might have argued my teacher, armed with conceptual art theory and said something like, “and what exactly do you propose is the difference?!”  But since I hadn’t gotten to Marcel Duchamp and John Cage yet, I had to quietly nurse my humiliation through the weekend (essay reading was always on Friday) until Monday when I triumphantly returned to class with a postcard bearing an image of Roussillon’s hills and was vindicated.