No email today!

Shaw seems to be down for webmail...what a pain when I don't have access at home!

Continues to be cool and sunny here. We've been using the fireplace and the olive wood burns so well...like coal really. They have a big brick bar b q outside so it will be great fuel for that. So much sun comes in during the day you rarely need heat. Very well designed because they have an arbour all along these windows so when that blooms there will be welcome shade. It great to use natural ways of controlling temp even though I would never give up the possibility of AC.

The house of our friends in Mexico was also very well designed for the continuous heat they get...around an indoor courtyard with no external windows and designed so cooling drafts prevailed throughout.

We walked down to the port yesterday...just 5 min from our house. Village even closer. Market day yesterday and the fellow I buy these wonderful roasted chickens from with all this garlic and herbes de provence in recognized me. I am a faithful customer when I'm here. Just wandered mainly this time...so much for the eye...will get into serious buying next Thurs morning.

We also joined the Carqueiranne library again...they are automated now but glad we experience the old system...very quaint. Got some mags on Provence and some CD's.
They're getting DVD's next week but seems like it's too much of a hassle to change our system. We' ve been enjoying Season 1 of '24' that we brought. Richard also lent us a number of movies so that should keep us going.

Will see if I can access this wretched email. I must learn how to get on Camosun so I have a back up. Jim's getting our train tickets for Paris and Brussels at the moment so ot here. Fot people emailing, a good idea is to email both of us because I often don't have access...Jim's is 'sexton@camosun.bc.ca'

Photos may be coming

It seems the airport has wireless although no one in this Internet place seems to know anything about it. Will check and see if we can do it...feels a bit like being in darkest Africa here in regards to the Internet.

Whazzat...snow in Nice...

Yes, apparently snow in Nice. A colleague of Jim's had a lot of problems getting to work as he lives high on a hill in Nice. Continues to be cool but no snow in Carqueiranne and we get such wonderful sun during the day we don't even need the heat.

In 2002 I wrote about arriving in Nice via plane (rather than train) for the first time...always so wonderful to fly in over that blue blue blue of the Med but I mentioned it wasn't quite like spending a sleepless night in a cheap couchette fro, Paris then stumbling out bleary eyed to the wonderful blue of the sea and sky, palms, terracotta roofs; pink houses etc

I just read a description Slyvia Plath wrote on her first experience of the south of France arriving by train when she was 23 yrs old...wouldn't it be wonderful to write like this?

' Then, lifting my head sleepily once; suddenly the moon sining incredibly on water. Marseilles. The Mediterranean. At last; unbelievable, the moon on that sea, that azure sea I dreamed about on maps in sixth grade.

The Med..Sleep again, and at last the pink vin rose light of dawn along the back of the hills in that strange country/ Red earth, orange tiled villas in yelloz and peach and aqua, and the blast, the blue blast of the sea on the right. The Cote d'Azure. A new country; a nez year: spiked zith a green explosion of palms; cacti sprouting vegetable octopuses with spiky tentacles, and the red sun rising like the eye of God out of a screaming blue sea'

Ahh yes...exactly like that...thank you Slyvia!

To everyone who reads this blog....

Remember how much fun we had painting the ocean in my basement!

I have another idea...

As much as I love the south of France I get homesick for my beloved West Coast so I want you to draw, paint, etc something to remind me of home on a 4 x 6 piece of paper and send it as a postcard or some other format if you like. It can be stick figures...NO ONE gets off!

I will be looking in my mailbox with great anticipation...

P.S.

Wireless seems a strange idea in France so so far I can't post my photos but I'm working on it.

Finalement en contact!

Bonjour de la France!

Spelling may be odd as Fr keyboard very different....takes a while to get used to it.

We've ended up in a fabulous villa in Carqueiranne and are not missing our little apartment in the port at all even though we don't have a view. We do have a huge place with four bedrooms up, gigantic bathroom with soaker tub for two, place for candles, wine, etc and big walk in shower...all very unusual in our experience in France. Separate kitchen, big living room with fireplace and supply of olive wood, dining room....all on a protected southern exposure and glass doors everywhere...fabulous sun all day.

We look out on a large private garden with a private pool, palm trees, orange tree, olive tree, mimosa and loads of other bushes and plants...will be interesting to see what blooms. Our landlords lived here with their two children but now have a hobby vinyard and continue to teach full time. They left us a bottle of rose and red...rose very special...tastes very much of the earth (they sell their grapes to a coop that makes a cotes de Provence appellation controle)

It's just great being back in this lovely little village and just about the first thing we did was have a huge bucket of mussels and frites sitting outside in a restaurant on the port. Have been having wonderful cheeses, wines, various pastis you can't get in Victoria (we're making a collecttion for you to taste, Don)

Went to a flea market yesterday and bought boules so we can play petanque. Also got some more pastis paraphenalia

We have a cellphone so please call (remember we're 8 hours ahead)
001 33 663 434 810

Address is c\o
Pratch
4 les Mas d'Audrey
83320 Carqueiranne
France

I would love to get some mail!

One last thing...

It really helps if people send me an email after tomorrow because it makes it so much easier for me using webmail and that crazy French keyboard if I just have to "reply" rather than "compose". Thanks!

Next stop Nice

This will be my last post until we get sorted out with everything in France and get access to wireless or an Internet cafe.
Looks like it's going to be a great day for flying tomorrow. I do love the trip from Frankfurt...mountains all the way then into Nice's airport which is right on the Mediterranean and we can pretty much count on the weather being sunny and warm.

The first time we did this we arrived around Jan 25 and it was so warm we felt like looking for our shorts and go walking but instead decided to crack open a bottle of rosé wine from the mini bar and watch the sun go down from our balcony overlooking the Promenade des Anglais.

This is a picture I took the next morning from the balcony as the sun was rising...jet lag makes you want to get up real early....




From the Hotel Suisse brochure...Don and Elaine...I'm sure you're going to love it there...great location.

Thanks Annette and Larry for a super dinner last night...it was great to see everyone!

Au revoir!

Cherry blossom time

Testing out flickr again...
We will miss seeing these trees come out completely this year but the mimosas in the south of France will compensate...gorgeous yellow blossoms everywhere!

Low tech - high tech

I read an interesting article about lobster fishermen in Brazil. As is the case in most fishing industries the stocks have dwindled so it isn't economically viable for people to use large gas powered boats so they have gone back to their small sail boats that are economical to buy, maintain, and run. But they all also have a GPS sytem on board!

There are still fishermen who go out from our little village of Carqueiranne in these small, old, wooden boats that you see in the picture below.


The port of Carqueiranne.

In our first stay there in 2002 I saw a fisherman come in from our apartment and went down and bought some fish from him. I decided to paint them...my first painting in France and after I had taken Absolute Beginner Painting and wondered if I would actually paint anything. That got me started and I painted a total of 32 that year. This painting continues to mean a lot to me. BTW, we ate the fish afterward and they tasted fantastic.

Today's sunrise

Some great sunrises these last few days...16 Celcius yesterday!

Amazing nests

Isn't there an amazing number of nests in this tree...wonder what birds they are and if these nest are occupied in the Spring?

Mediterranean blues

Reading "The French Riviera: A Literary Guide for Travellers" by Ted Jones and loved this description of winter on the Mediterranean by Lady Margaret Brewster 150 years ago:

"The sea here is certainly at times bluer than the bluest of other seas, but it is not at its loveliest phase, on the contrary, the greatest charm of the Mediterranean seems to me to be the esquisite variety; there is the lilac, the stony grey, the bleu foncé, the pale blue flushed with rose, the milkiness, as if it were the milky way, the sheet of silver, - and that I think is the most beautiful, for the sky then is silvered blue also, and yet the sun so bright, and clear that you can scarcely believe the colour is not the usual sky blue."

Yes...and great for amateur painters who can't mix paint colours very well...almost any colour one chooses will end up being what the Mediterranean looks like some of the time!

Robbie Burn's Dinner

I think it's close to 20 years that we have been celebrating Robbie Burn's birthday with Don and Elaine. We began doing it at each other's houses (even went very unauthentic one year and went out for sushi!). Jim borrowed a kilt and read the address to the Haggis the first time. Since then Bill Thomas (we raised a glass to him last night) fitted him out in the whole regalia and this year Susan knit him some authentic kilt hose! For the last 10 years or so we've been going to the Union Club and really enjoying it. Some pictures from last night.


Jim and his new socks...thanks, Susan!


Every year they have something a little different for the decorations. This year they had these drawings matched with Burn's poems. Jim read them to us in his Scottish brogue.


Most of us can relate to this one!


Jim and me.


Elaine, Laborio, Stella, Jim


Jim, me, Don


Judge Gow bringing in the Haggis


Highland Dancers


The Sailor's Hornpipe...she was terrific!

more children's art

Something to add some sunshine to this rainy day!

West Coast weather wimp

I confess....I am a typical West Coast weather wimp. Enough of this snow and cold already..!!!!! It does look like it's melting...but I took the picture of the snowdrop when I felt it was gone last time.



One of the first snowdrops of the season. Fern gave me a load of these bulbs.



Heather in the snow.

Golf mats

I did these two golf mats for a commission...this design is quite fun to do!


"16th hole at The Ridge (1)"
acrylic on linoleum
22 x 30


"16th hole at The Ridge (2)"
acrylic on linoleum
22 x 30

Snowmen

Well, that worked pretty well but I must remember to do the comments on the last picture I blog from Flickr so the comments will come before the pictures.
Flickr is pretty cool and I think I can create a space where people can view all the photos I upload there.

snowmen

Trying out Flickr via the wireless. This is practice for France. Richard set up this system so I don't have to size my photos after downloading them to the computer. This is quite fiddly to do and why last year I ended up with these huge pictures that are a problem for people to load. Flickr sizes them for me. Hope you enjoy the snowmen...will see how this works!

more children's art

more children's art

Last of the canvas mats

I did one last canvas mat and will do future mats on linoleum because they do stand up better. With the rest of my canvas I'm going to do placemats....and have done one already. The canvas should work just fine for the placemats.


"Swiftsure"
acrylic on canvas mat
22 x 30
Jan/05



"Vancouver Harbour"
acrylic on canvas placemat
12 x 18
Jan/05

Now and soon...!

What we woke up to today....


Looking out from my computer.


Picking up the newspaper.

Where we will soon be....


Port of Carqueiranne

Cold chilly morning

A few pictures I took while picking up the paper.

Christmas Photos

Some pictures John took when he and Carol were here over the holidays. John set up my tripod and used his wide angle lens to get the group one. The other one is of Jim and I unsuccessfully trying to take out own picture...Richard seems much better at this but it was fun to try!

Colours of Provence

When John and Carol brought these wonderful purple tulips when they came for lunch (I made a raclette) last week I didn't immediately think of Provence...but when the yellow daffodils came out the arrangement was absolutely perfect for the colours of Provence...purple lavender, yellow mimosa, lemons, & sunflowers. I think it looks great on my little provencale table (Oak Bay Dump treasure courtesy of Chris). The Pacific West Coast meets the Mediterranean. Tulips are a perfect choice as our little village of Carqueiranne is famous for growing tulips...the village crest even has a tulip on it.


Christmas bouquet of flowers


Painting I did our first year in Carqueiranne inspired by the many tulip fields.

My Christmas stack of books

For the last few Christmasses Jim has had the task of finding me a stack of books that I haven't read and preferably writers I'm not familiar with but would probably like....brave man! It's always tremendous fun to see what he manages to find.
Another successful foray this year....just one I had read (Alice Walker's "Possessing the Secret of Joy" ) and only one other writer I had read (William Trevor) but not this particular book. Bravo!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone and all the best for the coming year!

I went to get some rosemary from the garden for the rack of lamb I'm preparing...seemed very provençale and in keeping with our upcoming trip to the south of France...and lo and behold a part of it was blooming! Rosemary blooming in the garden seems like a very good way to start this new year.

Floor mats

Finishing off a couple of floor mats I had started a while ago before I begin a commission I have for two floor mats. One is on canvas and the other an experiment with linoleum since I found the mats I walked on quite a bit weren't really standing up. Using linoleum is becoming quite popular.

I was obsessing over doing these sunflowers but Carole mentioned her four year old grandson wouldn't have any part of sketching out a design with her recently and just "went at it:" with the paintbrush. So I took a page from young Dennis' book and did the same...just splat it out. I must do this more often!



"Sunflowers"
22 x 28 acrylic on linoleum
Dec/04




"Vancouver Harbour"
22 x 28 acrylic on canvas
Dec/04

Vancouver Harbour 2

Here's a painting I did of the other side of Vancouver Harbour - Kitsilano Beach and English Bay



Vancouver Harbour
22 x 28 acrylic on canvas
Dec/l4

Merry Christmas!

I would like to wish everyone who reads this weblog a very Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year! And a special Merry Christmas to Monique and her family in Annecy, France.



P.S. Plaid stockings bought in the Highlands and Richard's running shoe stocking which we bought in Whistler on a pre-Christmas ski trip with the Curlings.




A scene from the Alpes around Annecy.

Christmas collection

A nativity scene from Mexico, bought in Guadalajara.




These aren't really Christmas ornaments but I always make them part of my Christmas display.
They are little dolls I bought in Chaing Mai, Thailand.




And I love these little "Scotties" that belonged to my mother-in-law who was born in Scotland.