Friends be warned: if you overstay your weekend at Le Tramizal, chances are that you will be press ganged into modeling for my Monday evening drawing group.
Just escaped to the Pyrenees for a few days. The weather was warm and sunny and the Mediterranean was still gloriously swimmable. We crunched up leafy paths through chestnut forests to waterfalls, soaked in steaming sulfuric thermal pools in the wilderness, discovered a magical small village called Jojuls, and hiked up to the remote St Martin de Canigou Abbey. On the way home, we had a picnic lunch at Quéribus, one of the Cathar pogs. The holiday, as always, was over in a flash.
I didn't know what to do with all the tomatoes that were rapidly ripening on the vine this summer, so Mucella, a watercoloring engineer from Turkey who was taking my class, told me how her mother preserved her tomatoes. When she sent me these photos of the famous sauce and her fabulous mother, I had to add them to my blog.
Look at this face. Irrisitable, no? This scruffy looking mutt was wandering around Gramat for a couple days, dirty and collarless. I took him home, bathed him, photographed him, and posted his mug all over town hoping he would be claimed. Someone called but she never came to get him. Her life was "complicated" she said. So Sam came to Spain with us to camp on the beach and learn to swim. Since being home, he has caught and eaten one chicken, chased the sheep, and even taunted the cows in the fields. So I tied him up, but he chewed his way through two leashes and a collar and on Sunday I wasn't woken up with his usual kiss on my nose at dawn. Sam had disappeared and I was frantic. He wasn't home for his dinner so on Monday I called the police and yes, they had him. So he's back, this time with my name and number on his collar. I am taking things one day at a time. Every morning and evening he has to be walked on a retractable lead until we get to open fields so I can correct him. Thabo is teaching him to sit. And I think he is beginning to learn his new name. Sam. Sigh... I guess it's my life that's complicated now...
Went to meet friends in the Pyrennees for a late summer holiday. As a small child living in Paris, I had fond memories of a holiday on the Costa Brava. Everyone told me not to go back; that it was horribly built up and overcrowded and that I should just treasure my memories, but this is what we found: an empty beach where we were allowed to camp. At one of the beaches we found a fabulous formal restaurant, so we clipped on our bijoux and ordered delicious paella to down with a cold jug of sangria, followed by fanciful desserts. The others pitched and slept in their tents, but I slept on the beach and was rewarded with this magnificent sunrise. Don't try to find this spot. I am sure it was all a mirage...
