Does anyone know one? Or maybe a Pied Piper sort of guy with a magic flute to lead them all out of Provence?
For a brief moment there I thought there might possible be fewer snails than last year and that they would slowly disappear. Apparantly they were just waiting for dryer weather and higher temperatures to make their assault. They aren’t the giant gray snails-although we have those too-but a small white one. Maurice says you can’t fight nature, which is what he has to say about flies as well, so why do I even go out to pick them off my plants? But I think that for every five or ten pounds of snails I take off my plants, that is saving some munching on them. Who knows? I picked off over four dozen from our cabana. I’ve gotten so I can spot a snail on a plant at a long distance. There are so many of them, we are talking thousands, that I only look for them on plants in my yard now that I can see when sitting on our porch. I can’t stand to see the flower on a lavender plant dropping with the weight of a snail. At least snails are easier to pick than weeds. I promise not to write about the infestation again. It’s not very exciting like a visit to a village market although it is part of my life in Provence.

After a hard morning of shopping at the market in Lourmarin, we found a table in the shade, ordered a cool drink and watched life float by.

Maurice ordered a beer. I had my usual Diet Coke.

I’ve never gone here but doesn’t it look like a great place? Maybe someday.

The view across the way from us. I was, of course, looking for Peter Mayle but didn’t see him.

A typical scene-someone carrying bread with the tip broken off and eaten.

A couple of people expressed some interest in the plates I had taken photos of a few days ago so, this being a slow day here in Provence, I thought I’d put up some more photos and a little about them.

This is a Quimper plate. Maurice gave this to me a long time ago. I never use it, it is for display only as these plates can become collector items. Quimper is a city in Brittany, an interesting part of France, and well known for their pottery. They started putting these little figures dressed in traditional costumes on their pottery in the 1800’s.

I bought this plate in Sante Fe about 15 years ago. It was made in Mexico.

Isn’t this a great plate to serve French cheese on? Would you believe a friend of mine found it at a boot sale in England?

I have a set of four of these salad/dessert plates. A friend of mine gave me these for my birthday right before we moved to Provence. They all have typical scenes found around Provence. Here are the other three:

I bought a set of this pottery in Provence in a village called Biot, also known for their pottery. It was hard to choose, they had so many cute designs. I love blue and yellow-so cheerful.

A shot of the cup and saucer. Can you tell I like pottery? Especially plates.

 You wouldn’t think building a cabana in your yard would be that big a deal, would you? Well there can be difficulties. Maurice, being the honest soul that he is, sent a letter to the mayor and the Luberon officials telling them of our plans of building the cabana. This is a big deal here as everything has to conform to some Luberon National Park standards. For instance, we couldn’t do our porch the way that we wanted to and our fire place chimney couldn’t be on an outside wall. Your house has to have that Luberon look. So Maurice went right ahead and had our cabana built without waiting for permission. It seems to be pretty standard around here-it seems to me that most people build just about what they want to. You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff the Savoyards have done to their house, some things that I wouldn’t think would be alllowed, such as a wooden porch. But, I digress. After the cabana was finished we received a letter from the official of the Luberon Association. He said our cabana did not conform to Luberon standards. He listed several reasons for this. It was kind of scary as we learned that it was possible that we would have to tear the whole thing down. Maurice finally went and talked to the mayor who is basically the one who could make us do so but he told Maurice he didn’t need to, thank God.

 Reflection of a sunset in our pool–next to the cabana

 A friend told me that they got permission to build a cabana-they call them pool houses here. A cabana is a log cabin, I found out. Instead of an open covered structure like ours, they built a little guest house and added a kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. Luckily, none of this can be seen from the road. Her neighbors could complain, and if they did, she would have to pull the whole thing down. Once ten years have passed you are safe. Unfortunately for us, you can get a very clear view of the cabana from the road up above us so it is hard to do anything without the whole village knowing about it.

 Whenever there are clouds, I always get outside to see the show being put on by the sun as it sets.

 What is interesting to me is that not one but two neighbors have stopped by and told us how much they like our cabana, and would we mind if they copied it. It’s not the common type seen around here, I guess. We always say sure but warn them about what they need to do to conform to the Luberon standards.

 This has been a bad week. Most of it had to do with the house. Can you believe that you can have a bad time even when living in Provence? Indeed you can.

 We are lucky enough to have a swimming pool and the water is always really clear and clean. However, when we had it built we just had the surface plastered, not tiled. In the States you can, and usually do, plaster the pool with no problems but, as I have said here before, the pool guys did an incredibly poor job of it and the surface was rough and Maurice especially hated it. So he decides to have it tiled. He emptied the pool the night before they came-always a risky thing to do in Provence-but they actually did show up. They did part of the job one week-end and returned the next to finish. Maurice wasn’t happy with the job after the first weekend. In fact, he couldn’t sleep he was worrying about it so much and in the middle of the night got up with a flashlight to go and look at it. He slipped and fell and disrupted some of their work and has some scrapes and bruises to show for his midnight adventure. (I slept through the whole thing). So they finish the job, we fill the pool and four little tiles promptly come off. Maurice can’t stand it and he empties the pool again to repair it himself.

 Meanwhile, there is a cabana that we recently had built that needs painting. It is mostly just large timber supports with a tile roof with those pre fabricated sections in between that you can use to make fences with-just attach them to poles. Anyway, Maurice kept saying it needed painting. He had gone out and done the big wooden parts and they soaked up the paint like a sponge so we had to go buy some special product to paint the wood first with a primer. And, by the way, the paint costs over 60 friggin’ euros a liter! “What is it made of, gold?,” I asked Maurice. No, oil in fact.

(Oh Home Depot, I miss thee! I miss thy broad hallowed aisles, thy cheap paint and brushes, thy hours of being open, thy helpful sales people.)

 So, I get myself out there and start painting the sections that are pre-fabricated. They are made out of really cheap wood and there are all sorts of fiddle-ly parts and it overlaps all over the place and inserts on each end and the darn wood has ridges-you know, like Ruffles Potato Chips-Ruffles have ridges!- only there is about 1000 yards of Ruffles, all flat. I had been out there about an hour when Maurice came out and said, “Oh, you’re painting that?” Excuse me? It turns out that he didn’t think we should paint them, just the other wood so now that I’ve started, I can’t stop. It took me days to just get the primer coat on and the whole time I’m kicking myself for even starting. Maurice is in the pool digging up loose tile and saying, “This is a disaster!” It turns out he is using the same dang guys who did the plastering-what was he thinking? And I am painting Ruffles with, “What was I thinking?” going through my mind. When I am all finished I will post some photos-and when the pool is full too.

I think this is Don Quixote fighting impossible windmills-taken in Paris.

 No, Maurice hasn’t been cooking in the kitchen, although he does sometimes. I actually had a real live little green frog in my kitchen one night. We have no idea how he got inside our house. It’s a real mystery. I tried to get a photo of him but the light wasn’t good and my photo came out blurry. Maurice had seen another larger one of the same bright neon green color in the little shed where our pool filter is. I was thinking maybe it got stuck on the broom Maurice was using to clean the shed the day before. The cat didn’t bring it in as he is a total chicken heart and only is outside when we are. The frog did go up the side of the island in the kitchen with his sticky little feet so maybe he just came in an open door but I don’t know why he would. I escorted him outside with my broom and haven’t seen him since.

 Sometimes there is nothing much going on around our village but the other day on my walk I ran into this guy with a dead rabbit. At first I thought he must have a trap somewhere but he told me that the rabbit had been hit by a car.

 So in my bad French I asked him if he was going to eat it. He answered me but I’m not sure what he said but he pointed to the back leg area so I guess so. Don’t think I would.

 Isn’t this drink a lovely color? Lisa of The Bold Soul brought it when she visited. It has a grapefruit flavor. It’s great to just look at in the glass too.

 You see these cigales for sale all over Provence. Most of them have a hole on the top like a vase and you are supposed to put sprigs of wheat and lavender inside for good luck and prosperity. I have one on the wall on our porch but the mistral has blown away every attempt I have made to keep anything inside it. They are cute though.

 Some of you may have come back hoping to read chapter 2 of my “memoirs” of my life before France. I’m not sure if this is the venue for something like that but if you would like to read the rest, send me an email at lpennin104@aol.com and say book in the subject line and I will send you a chapter a week, sort of a serial like they used to do.