Le Pere Jordan

It's been a "Journey" since I've felt I had the freedom of time, or the mental bandwidth to write anything. The fact that two years have passed since our last trip to France, that ended in a Medical Evacuation back to the US, is hard to fathom.

I now feel slightly guilty saying that there are some positive aspects to our life, in view of everyone else's  struggles.

My husband will always be "The Artistic One".

When friends ask him what he's up to, he  speaks about painting and possible upcoming art shows. His easel, paints and a fresh canvas are still where they were in our family room/Art Studio, although I have moved things over a bit to facilitate the passage of TAO with his walker frame.

He no longer paints or reads. He sleeps a lot and then sits and watches TV from the kitchen table. When it's not too hot we sit on the covered patio and watch the wind move the tree tops and the dogs run the fence to bark at delivery drivers and people walking by.

As I sit with him, I share videos, from my Facebook feed, of silly cats, redneck creative transportation solutions and familiar regions of France.

The image above is a stained glass window he designed and had made for our French house. The character "Old Mr Jordan" gave TAO hell seventy-plus years ago when he let the cows wander into the wrong field. He also sat in the barn with him in winter and carved wooden clogs, while telling stories about the village. I've heard more stories about him than of TAO's father.

TAO had sketched this image, which we still have,in pencil, long ago. You can see the rolling hills in the distance. The fence line takes your eye where the Artist intended.

When discussing subject matter for this tall bathroom window, I thought this image would honor a World that meant so much to TAO and be relevant to the surroundings.

The house is under offer. It's unlikely we'll ever go there again.

TAO's eldest daughter has been fantastic, shouldering the responsibilities of finding and making arrangements with an Agent, a Notaire and even going to the Department of Construction Permits to have them give the final signature on a project that was completed a decade ago.

She's had all of our paintings moved safely into storage for us. I told her to let her siblings choose any that they might like for themselves and to give away any furniture and household stuff that the potential new owners didn't want.

The one thing I wanted to remove and keep was this window. Unfortunately, the craftsman that came to try to extract it found it was installed in a way that can't be undone.

We now have a small chip of blue glass as a souvenir and these beautiful photos, taken by she who would be my Step-Daughter, if she were younger and I were older.

 

Lonely as a Cloud....

 

The work of friendship is meaningful. The condensed version of a lunch interlude with daffodils became a coffee in the car, on the way to the gardens. Chatting, laughing and darkly humorous commiserating, alternated with discussions on the architecture of naked trees and the optimism of tiny wisteria leaf sprouts beside magnolia blooms burnt brown-tipped by recent frost.

Gardeners: Seers of the future.

"Seer"- a person with unusual powers of foresight; - one who divines the future.

Gardening is a leap of faith; optimism personified; visionary belief that planting, tending and nurturing will produce concrete results. Indefatigable Gardener Egos are prepared to accept that  lack of success does not mean surrender. There will always be next year.

The strange, finger-like leaves unfurling relentlessly from the shadows are this year's peonies-to-be. Part of my pleasure in gardening is that I see the images of the future; beautiful flowers to come. In my minds eye I leap from this to fragrant, pristine white flowers tinged with rose.

I tried and failed for three years to grow peonies. Then I had plants with leaves only. The blooms did not reappear the following year.  Now I have consistent success, using what I learned from each disappointment and counting on each previous failure to multiply my satisfaction.

Looking Up!

One of the truisms of horse riding is that you should look to where you want to be. If you look down at the ground then that is your destiny but, if you lift your eyes over the obstacle to your distant goals, then you will achieve them.

Our (My) original plan was to leave work behind us at noon on Friday and head south for our weekend of eagle-spotting. We were both thwarted and supported by the request from Artist Jane Rosen for an appointment to choose stones from our inventory to use in displaying her works.

We have worked with Jane Rosen before. She is a seriously creative artist and sculptor grown from New York Bohemian roots and transplanted to a coast side ranch where her love of nature has led her to produce a series of carved stone and now blown glass falcons, hawks and eagles. The energy and excitement of finding and appreciating the best colors, textures and shapes in our stones, as well as being welcome business, gave us pleasure and made the time fly by.

Knowing that we had a three hour drive to our destination, the last forty miles on very rural, unlit windy roads and we would be unable to get there before dark, I conceded that Hubby could have one more night in his own bed but that the alarm would ring at 5am, no excuses accepted. We had a smooth early morning trajectory and were welcomed by the staff and out on the lake by 10 am; supplied with loaner binoculars much stronger than my own and a map of the lake studded with silver stars , showing where most eagle sightings were to be expected.

For most of the morning, we were the only boat stirring the waters. The weather was perfect; mostly sunny and warm enough to laze around semi-snoozing between arduous bouts holding binoculars to our eyes. The eagles are first spotted as a dark outline, perched in the topmost branches of the abundant oak trees as they survey the open grassland for rodents and snakes. They are there to breed and reproduce before continuing their migratory path. I was satisfied just to have seen one and know from the locals that there were two dozen at last count. I didn't exert myself too much and counted 5 eagles myself. As the thermals rose a little towards the middle of the day two eagles took flight and circled before dropping out of sight beyond the crest of the hill.

Eagles are not the only wildlife of course. I bundled up and took my coffee outside to watch the sunrise Sunday morning with a mama deer and her two fawns. Mama came to eat bread from my hands and then all three grazed nearby for a while.
A storm had been predicted for later in the day and, when it was time to leave, we headed towards the coast to face the weather head on. The dormant vineyards between Paso Robles and Cambria were dissolved in white fog before we got too far and then we were hit by the pounding rain.
Up the coast road past San Simeon it was too wild to stop. The elephant seals were not only on the beaches but out into the ice plants, heads up  roaring to the sweeping rain. They are so huge that they were visible from the car as we drove by.
Hubby likes to drive, especially in challenging conditions. There were a few boulders down in the road and we saw multiple emergency vehicles involved in hauling some poor soul back up the cliff just before we stopped for lunch in Gorda. It was too foggy for a helicopter rescue, that's for sure.

As we neared Carmel the skies cleared and we pulled into Point Lobos to stretch our legs and look for sea otters. If you were a sea otter looking for a beautiful place to raise a family, you would be hard pressed to find a more perfect spot than Point Lobos' China cove. The water is always turquoise, even on a stormy, January day.

I hope the sea otter by the rocks, near the center of this picture will be visible. He's on his back, floating and noshing on something. Then he would dive to catch something else and resume his concentration on his tummy-top buffet, completely impervious to the roiling swells.
So, my weekend was condensed into a shorter span than planned but we fit way more in than we could have imagined by just going with what felt right at that moment. Finding our way back from "My" to "Our" for a while, clearing our heads and facing into whatever storms lie ahead.

Optimism

Optimism is hope in sneakers - it makes life more comfortable but doesnt have to be taken too seriously.

An Optimist looks on the bright side, walks on the sunny side, and gets up on the right side of the bed every day.

This may lead to the impression that optimists are slightly out of touch.

But they are the ones who strike the match that dispels all the dark.

Who else reminds us that a glass half empty is also a glass half full?

Who else looks for the pony wherever there's a pile of you-know-what?

Who else pictures life a little rosier than it is?

And often, because of them, it really is.

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