Leaves on tarmac

'Pinky-brown dead leaves from Brochain's eucalyptus tree have fallen into the patches of soft tar on the road.  They flatten and meld and crack, and look like some decorative effect.'

( 24th July, from my often neglected but still operational other blog)

Blossom

From the arboretum, the other day, windy and bright, where Mol and I went. Magnolia, pussy willow, quince japonica.

Today, always one of the best in the year: boiled eggs with faces on and bread and butter for breakfast; marzipan eggs and the smallest Lindt chocolate bunnies (always milk, never dark, we are willfully unsophisticated about chocolate), in a dish with a creamy pale daffodil and a maroon-purple hellebore; listening to The Messiah; ordering cards from Moo; a chicken and mozzarella and sun-dried tomato toastie for lunch; reading; watching the greenfinches squabble over sunflower seeds; dreaming.

A mild, breezy day, sunny patches and blackbirds singing.  Time for tea and a walk.

Happy Easter, whatever it means to you.

Trédaniel plan d'eau, and Cheapcam gets it off her chest.

From reading and writing my other blog, it's evident how often I go to the plan d'eau at Trédaniel. One or two people have speculated about the place, that it seems to be a very rich source of nature and interest, but they can't quite envision it. I half-jokingly suggested I draw a map, as well as posting more photos. Sitting down to my afternoon cuppa, I searched to see if there was any plan of the municipality on-line, but could only find a couple of Google-Earth references, so before I knew it I was thoroughly absorbed in drawing a map of my own based on these and my memory and impressions, even getting out the felt pens and colouring it! The result you see above. Any ten-year-old could probably have made a better job, and it's not remotely to scale, but it's the second time in a week or so I've felt moved to look out the colouring sticks, and I have rather enjoyed it. It should enlarge, should you feel the need.

It also coincided with my downloading poor little Cheapcam's memory card for the first time in over two months, so the photos I've used here are almost entirely from that.

Trédaniel is a commune outside our small cantonal town of Moncontour, a couple of miles from where we live. In the 1990s the population was in the hundreds, but there's been a lot of new building there in the time we've been living here, so it must be more now. It has a few shops, a school, a restaurant, a local produce selling scheme, and a quite interesting old church ( I might post something about that in the future), and the Seven Saints' chapel is further out on its edges.

A plan d'eau is any fairly small artificial lake. This one is there as a recreational spot, part of the landscaping of the municipal area. It is stocked with fish and anglers use it mostly at weekends, you can just go and get a day permit from the Mairie nearby. The watercourse it is part of continues in a number of other smaller ponds on terraces down the hill to the sewage treatment works at the bottom.

It isn't a scenic wonder, none come from far and wide to see it, but we like it, on misty mornings, warm days and even in the rain. Molly loves it, and starts to bark well before we turn the corner of the road that leads to it, and as it's also, more or less, on the way to both St Brieuc and Lamballe, it's easy to indulge her. There are, thank goodness, few amenities, no swings and slides, only a rather weedstrewn boules court up the hill, and two benches where you can sit and let the perennial and universal calm that drifts from water, any water, even a municipal fishing pond, penetrate the spirit. The benches are in good order, never vandalised, though a few brambles and buttercups sometimes encroach,

Many of the larger oak and chestnut trees that predate it's construction have been left, and it has been planted with all kinds of flowering shrubs of a robust kind: spiraea, buddleia, hydrangea are all flowering now, and in the spring there are plentiful purple rhododendrons, (that splodge is Mol in the distance below)

and a stand of shrub-sized judas trees.




The rugosa roses produce flowers and hips for a long season.

The water's edge is kept fairly clear of reeds and reedmace, for the benefit of the anglers but also to avoid providing cover for coypu, the giant naturalised Canadian rodents that can destroy banks and spread leptospirosis. But there are a few plant species planted there: these which I can't identify,

and a gunnera which I'm never quite sure if I like, but its forms and textures, in all kinds of states, continue to intrigue me.

In front of one bench is a patch of red water lilies.

Although the verges and banks are mown and kept fairly tidy, there are plenty of places nature is allowed to play a little rough with. Among the interesting wild plants that flourish is mullein, whose prettily furry rosettes and spikes have here been ravaged by the nearly as prettily zingy-coloured mullein moth caterpillars. The moth itself is a dull grey little thing, but the larva obviously have a wild yellow and black youth among the fuzz.

and where the ground slopes away north toward the valley, there is a delightful embroidered riot of wildness and wet, which is especially rich at the moment, with knapweed and bedstraw and umbels of something or other, willowherb, the last of the marguerites, bright yellow birdsfoot trefoil, grass seedheads, thistles (don't tell the Prefecture...), and even at the head of a stream that flows out from the lake, some reedmace, which aren't bullrushes, and Moses wasn't found in them, though Alma Tadema thought he was. (In fact I've been searching for that painting, and there are no reedmace in it! It seems to be a misconception about a misconception about a myth...)




There is a reasonable amount of fauna: herons, green and spotted woodpeckers, finches, tits, a nuthatch or two, I thought I saw a tree creeper once, and a lot of rabbits, since, although there is fishing, no chasseurs are allowed, as it is a public park. During the winter I'm often glad of it as a place where I won't run into them. Even so, the ducks are shy, and prefer the ponds further off where people don't go. Molly is clueless about rabbits, they often pop up right in front of her and she doesn't see them, so busy is she with her olfactory sense. However, an extraordinary wildlife sighting one may experience is of the Beast of Trédaniel, the plan d'eau cat, captured here sunning itself on a rock, and really an enormous creature, quite capable, I'm sure, of taking on a fully grown rabbit.

This is the only picture here not taken with the small camera. I find the place yields a surprising amount to look at and take in and photograph; as well as the entries on Out with Mol, quite a lot of photo posts here have been from time spent there. Yet more are sitting in folders which I've not posted. A post at Jean's had me thinking about how we tend to feel the need to only use, seasonal, up to the minute, current photos on our blogs. I like this seasonality, but also think it might be a good idea sometimes to look over and show older pictures that perhaps were passed over before. So perhaps I'll run an occasional series of back-number plan d'eau pictures.

I'll put a copy of the map in the sidebar of Out with Mol, with a link to this post, and may feel inclined to draw another of the local area which I write about. I suppose security is vaguely important, not pinpointing ourselves too closely etc, but I can't imagine many criminals would take the trouble...

What about the thirty word experiment?

I can't be doing with too much agonising about blogging on blogs. Generally I think one should get on with it or shut up. Doubts and losses of confidence are inevitable, no one can be brilliant and inspired all the time. Actually, some people can and are, and they are those whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose, but I can't, and fretting about it, floundering in impotent envy and self-pity and making odious comparisons, won't help.

However, those doubts arising, the little-and-often structure and discipline of doing thirty words a day was useful and interesting. I hope it has enforced habits of succinctness and elegance which I can maintain, though I fear it may be as when I have imposed dietary restrictions on myself; asceticism gives way for a time to a more moderate and wholesome restraint, followed by total relapse, two glasses a day at least and bacon sandwiches. We'll see.

I continue to reflect indecisively and scribble inconclusively about What Matters. ( In fact one helpful insight I may have arrived at is the simple necessity for a personally satisfactory balance between time spent scribbling longhand in comfy old spiral bound squared-paper notepad, often on the sofa, wrapped up in warm stuff with a dog on my lap and Tom plugged into headphones muttering darkly at the news, and time on the computer.) I might yet try to develop some of the scribbled things further here, if I find time in between more interesting matters such as food and knitting.

For now though, I think perhaps the most positive thing I've begun to think about was prompted by what Dave pointed out about Clare's 30 word 'Once around the Park': that its most important feature is not its brevity but that it is based on continuing observation of a particular place. I see now that this is perhaps one of the strengths, beauties and achievements of blogging, the honouring of our rootedness and our surroundings, however humble and apparently unremarkable. We can all, in our way, become contemplatives, breaking through the barriers of boredom and limitation and finding, in quiet, patient observation and appreciation, grace in simply being where we are. And at the same time we can experience other places and realities intimately through others' writings and pictures. It's not necessarily about creating fabulously beautiful art, though if we're lucky some of us might, but it's possibly more important than that.

Moe Lauher has a simple mantra, as he photographs the roofs around his house in different weathers, which, he says, are not the rooftops of Rome or Paris, but 'this is where we live'. 'The desire for beauty', he affirms, can be satisfied by the familiar sight of a houseplant standing in a yellow saucer. Dave is a great inspiration in the depth and beauty with which he recreates the place where he lives and works, I love and was very tempted to imitate his new photoblog Visual Soma. GrannyJ carefully and lovingly chronicles the pavements and scrapyards and crazy folk art and more of Prescott. Joe's Tunbridge is an endlessly rich and quirky and intricate place which half puts me in mind of Stanley Spencer's Cookham, where angels could be just around the corner, or glimpsed from the corner of an eye. Jean's London is deep and subtle and full of secrets and not without terror. This list is not intended to be invidious; it could go on and on.

Yet having said all that, it's not the only way to blog; with many of my favourites I have little or no awareness of where they are written from, and it doesn't matter. I have always been leery of making Box Elder into an 'Expat's life in France' type blog, and deliberately chose a name which gave no clue to its setting, was in fact misleading. That genre of writing, as exemplified by my bete noire Peter Mayle, is one I'm suspicious of, and though I know that local colour and interest is popular here, and I enjoy writing and photographing it, I don't want it to be exclusively what I do.

So, seeing as how I've enjoyed doing thirty words, and think it's a good form of regular writing practice, and recognising the importance of place-based observation, I've started another blog just for that. I wasn't too certain about this; I've now got four on my dashboard and have to think about which one I'm hitting ( two are fairly dormant ), and personally when I go to someone's profile and see a list of different blogs I find it off-putting. However, I'll make it clear this is my main one, and the new one is a sideline. If you care to visit and drop the odd comment fine, but it's not mandatory. A nice thing about the limited output is it's easy to catch up with reading after an absence. It's very similar to Clare's in presentation and probably style too, but I've no shame in imitating such a good model. It'll be based on the walks I take every day with Molly, who is very much one of the things that keeps me rooted here, so is called 'Out with Mol '. There won't obviously be as much human interest as in Clare's - her babies in swings post was a cracker that kept me smiling for days - and the odd bit of rumination or 'poetry', since a regular walk is good for such things.

The box elder tree will continue to be home. Never a grand arboreal specimen, and subject to the odd disagreeable parasite, but harmless in root and branch and not without use for timber or sugar, faute de mieux. Unlikely ever to set viable seed, but pleasant in leaf and aspect, and slightly exotic by dint of its displacement from its land of origin, you're welcome to join me in its shade.