Debbiedoos "Magazine Copycat Challenge"

Today Debbidoo is hosting a Magazine Copycat Challenge party.
I read about it on Ricki Jill's blog Art@Home  this morning and it sounded like fun.

As chance would have it the July issue of one of my favourite decorating journals, Campagne Decoration, had just arrived and as I leafed through the pages I found my inspiration for the challenge.

I took a vintage French enamelware utensil rack, threaded it with garden twine (supplied by Sean The Gardener) and hung it on a sunny wall in the garden.
I found three small plant pots sitting beneath my potting table, took three marigold plants from an urn at the front of the house and voila!

My Campagne Decoration Magazine Copycat shot.

Click here to see more copycats and maybe join in the fun.

Linking this post also to

Inspiration Friday with Heather and Vanessa @ At The Picket Fence
Seasonal Sundays with The Tablescaper
and
Mary's Mosaic Monday @the little red house.

Pink Hydrangeas

This week the hydrangeas in the front garden have absolutely "popped", thanks no doubt to all the wonderful rain we've been having!
So, I decided to show them off and join Beverly @ How Sweet The Sound for my first Pink Saturday.
Before linking up I visited Beverly's blog to check out "the rules" and discovered a delightful way to get to know bloggers I've never met before.

This is Beverly's challenge:
We have a weekly challenge for you to visit the blog of at least one participant that you have never visited before. Then next Saturday include that blog and a link in your post. Quite a few of you have been done this challenge, and have met some of the great Pink Saturday participants. Thank you for sharing with us.

As I browsed the thumbnail pix, from last weeks particpants, a jug of gorgeous white hydrangeas caught my eye and with just one click I had "met" a new blogger friend.
Pam @ White Ironstone Cottage who is hosting a new weekly gathering which she is calling "Treasure Chest Friday".

Don't you love living in blogland!

Where else can you meet so many interesting people whilst sitting in a comfortable chair, tea cup to hand, dog lying by your feet, looking out at a lovely garden and all without getting dressed up and putting on make up?

I'll be sharing these beautiful flowers also with

Harriet @ Hey Harriet for Shadow Shot Sunday,

The Tablescaper and Seasonal Sunday

and

Mary @the little redhouse for Mosaic Monday.

Bon weekend a tout!

Bloomin' lovely!

Stately yellow iris

It's Monday so we're off to Marys little red house for Mosaic Monday, do click on the link to visit Mary and see beautiful mosaics from around the globe.

My favourite rose.

Have a wonderful week, everyone.

Mosaic Monday

It's Monday and that means Mosaics!
For Marys Mosaic Monday @the littleredhouse this week some shots of our gardens front and back!

Scenes from the potager

Fragrant wisteria, pure white clematis and an old fashioned rose.

The front garden is blooming all over!

Click here or on the little red house button on the sidebar to see plenty more mosaics from around the world.

Mosaic Monday - Flowers Are Red.

Flowers are Red
Click here for a beautiful, moving poem
about red flowers.
Joining Mary at the little red house
for
Mosaic Monday.
Wishing you all a wonderful week!

P.S.

Blondie has asked me what the names of the flowers are,

so...........

the top two pix are of a red rhododendron that I rescued from the reduced (dying plants!) section at the garden centre a few years ago, the bottom right is a pieris plant also from the garden centre, (full price!) and the bottom left is a flowering quince bush that was here in the garden when we bought the house.

Trees and Poetry.

After the spring flowers have faded and become just a distant memory the trees in our garden step forward to delight us with acid green leaves and neon pink and gentle white blossom.

TREES

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree

A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed

Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day

And lifts her leafy arms to pray,

A tree that may in summer wear

a nest of robins in her hair

Upon whose blossom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems were made by fools like me

But only God can make a tree.

­Joyce Kilmer

The Sound of the Trees

I WONDER about the trees.

Why do we wish to bear

Forever the noise of these

More than another noise

So close to our dwelling place?

We suffer them by the day

Till we lose all measure of pace,

And fixity in our joys,

And acquire a listening air.

They are that talks of going

But never gets away;

And that talks no less for knowing,

As it grows wiser and older,

That now it means to stay.

My feet tug at the floor

And my head sways to my shoulder

Sometimes when I watch trees sway,

From the window or the door.

I shall set forth for somewhere,

I shall make the reckless choice

Some day when they are in voice

And tossing so as to scare

The white clouds over them on.

I shall have less to say, But I shall be gone.--

Robert Frost

cherry blossoms

with the morning moon

still in the sky
(old traditional Haiku translated by Robin Gill)

Trees

Trees just stand around all day

and sun themselves and rest.

They never walk or run away

and surely that is best.

For otherwise how would

  squirrel or robin find its nest?

Aileen Fisher

Many thanks to NC State University for sharing these poems on their website.

Trees of Strength

Please join me over at A Southern Daydreamer and Susan our gracious hostess

for Outdoor Wednesday

click here or on the sidebar button.

Linking also to a new blog that Ricki Jill led me to,

Mamarazzi's Dandelion Wishes 

and

 My Happy List

Celebrate Spring with Victoria @ A Delightsome Life.

When Spring arrives in Normandie it's time to bring out the garden furniture and place it in the sunniest spots.
On the patio; next to the vegetable beds in the potager; and in shady spots on the grass, under the apple tree.

For Kathy's Celebrate Spring with Victoria party, over at her blog A Delightsome Life, I'd like to share with you some inspiration from a beautiful French magazine: Campagne Decoration.
You may remember that I've blogged about this gorgeous magazine before, click here  and here to see more.

On Sunday afternoon I sat down in a sunny corner of our garden, opened the latest Spring issue of CD and was instantly transported to a garden so stylish, so chic, so very French.
Click here if you missed my First Day of Spring post.

An outdoor lifestyle that I can only dream of, je reve!

The text accompanying these wonderful photographs roughly translated says............
Le Premier Beau Jour.
The air is more soft, the sun caresses the shuddering leaves. In every plant hatches a promise of happiness.

Photographs Stephen Clément,Campagne Decoration, Edition #68 Mars/Avril 2011.

Please join Kathy and all the other Springtime bloggers gathered together to Celebrate Spring today, just click here or on the sidebar button!

Fleur update:

Fleur is settling in very well,  has now lost all her baby teeth and is getting bigger every day.
She likes to dig holes and bury stones!

First Day of Spring - Sunday in Normandy.

Came the Spring with all its splendour

All its birds and all its blossoms

All its flowers, and leaves, and grasses.

Longfellow - Hiawatha.



The first day of spring in Normandy can mean different things to different people.

Time to get in training.

The Tour de France will be here before you know it!

Out in the fields once again.

It's good to be out of the barn at last.

My favourite thing to do on a sunny Sunday -  First Day of Spring..................

Millefeuille, tea and a beautiful magazine.

Joining The Tablescaper for Seasonal Sundays with these scenes of la vie quotidienne en Normandie.

May your First Day of Spring be just as beautiful.

Outdoor Wednesday - Spring has sprung!



Spring lambs with their mums.
4 sets of twins.



Spring flowers in our back garden.
The bees were already hard at work on the white ornamental cherry blossom.

Not too much time available to blog since Mme Fleur arrived at the weekend and Mr Darling Husband flew the coop for a business trip to the UK!

I just had to share some pix, taken on a recent Sunday morning, of the new lambs that Jacques the owner of our village epicerie has in the field next to the shop.

Also some very quick snaps taken in our back garden Tuesday afternoon whilst Fleur & Ben were chasing around like whirling dervishes, bonding over a tennis ball.

All the shots I took of their playtime were too blurred to share but I'm sure you can picture the scene, n'est pas?

Joining Susan for Outdoor Wednesday @ A Southern Daydreamer and Jill @ The French Cupboard for French Inspiration Thursday with this slice of rural Normandy Life.

1st March. - St. Davids Day.

St. David (Dewi Sant) the patron Saint of Wales was a monk who lived during the sixth century and died circa 588 on March 1st.

Although perhaps not as well known as Irelands Saint Patrick, for centuries the date has been a National Festival in Wales.
As part of the celebration people wear either a leek or a daffodil in their lapels.

National St. Davids Day Parades will take place today in Cardiff and Wrexham in Wales, as well as further afield in China and New York!

Apparently Welsh Week is being celebrated across the United States.
Click here to go to the BBC News Wales web page for more info.

In honor of the occasion (and because it was my lovely Dad's favourite flower) some freshly picked daffodils from my garden, with branches of forsythia and red buds of flowering quince.

I'll be linking this post to A Return to Loveliness with Kathy @ A Delightsome Life today

and I'll also be joining Liz @ Rose Vignettes for Fresh Cut Friday,

 where there are bound to be masses of pretty spring vignettes to see.



W stands for Wisteria.

Just four more weeks of Mrs Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday classes, then school's out for summer!
One of my garden favourites here at the Presbytère is this beautiful Wisteria.
I'm not sure how old it is, it was already in situ when we moved in almost 14 years ago.

Every year, sometimes twice a year, it produces these beautiful blossoms and perfumes the garden with it's delicate scent.

Quickly seguing into my favourite US TV show Desperate Housewives who all in live in Wisteria Lane.
Click here for a wikipedia rundown on the Lane, it's occupants and surprisingly how the Universal lot has been used in the past.
I was amazed to see how the same sets had been used in previous shows and who had lived there. I found it fascinating.

See you in class!

Garden shadow shots.

As I was passing by an upstairs window I noticed the fabulous shadows that the cherry trees already sprinkled with white blossom, the laurel hedge around the potager and the ancient old crab apple tree loaded down with mistletoe, were casting over the back garden.

Grabbing my trusty Lumix I took these shots before heading to the front of the house to see what was happening there.

The huge ornamental cherry which dominates the garden is about to "pop" into glorious pinkness, here and there you can see small flowers appearing, almost on an hourly basis. I was thrilled to see the almost mirror image shadow that this tree was throwing across the lawn.

When we bought this house there were three linden trees growing against the wall. Sadly, over the years, two of them fell victim to gale force winds which brought them crashing down, now only one remains to cast it's shadow across the driveway.

By the way as I sit here blogging I can hear a cuckoo in woods behind the house (first time this year), the house martins returned exhausted after their long flight from Africa at the weekend (I wonder if the volcanic ash slowed them down at all?) to their nests in the eaves of the garage, and everywhere I look the cows are back in the fields. WooHoo!!

I'm linking this post to Outdoor Wednesday graciously hosted by Susan @ A Southern Daydreamer who reminds us in her post that tomorrow April 22nd will be the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day.

At the weekend I'll also link to Shadow Shot Sunday held every week @Hey Harriet's Australian blog.

There's still time to enter my giveaway, the winner's name will be drawn on Saturday 24th April.

Click here if you missed the details.