Last week at Brecy

During my last week at Brecy, garden work has included - edging, pulling weeds, and hedge trimming. Also, watching the adorable kitten chase butterflies. Trust me, it's hard work. Katie and Michel left on Friday night to go on vacation for two weeks, and a new temporary guardian arrived for the chateau. Georges really likes mayonnaise. I didn't get to spend too much time with him, though, because I was kidnapped by a lady from Tarboro, NC!

This lady has an awesome life story. I've missed the south!

The first day we went to the market and (finally!) the interior of the cathedral in Bayeux, and also to the Gardens of Castillon. There's no way to get there without a car, so I was thrilled! Not only was the garden amazing, but it was definitely a breath of fresh air to get to talk with someone in English for a little while.

I found this amusing, because it's a
Persian Ironwood (Parrotia persica) trimmed into cloud form!

Castillon was a real treat to get to visit. Sallie brought me back to Brecy for the evening, and then came back for more the next day! We went to Caen to see the Jardin des Oiseaux, which has a MASSIVE rose garden.

The rose garden was a little overwhelmingly large.

Some of these suckers were HUGE!

Somehow French roses seem prettier to me.

In addition to the roses, there were a number of other small displays and a hedge maze, and just before leaving, we found a pleasant surprise.

This one represented friendship with Ireland.

This one was just nifty.

We didn't have enough time to find our way through.

Holy cow lace making party!

We came across a group of women ranging from age 13 to 93 making lace in the park! I was rather impressed, but I'm going to call that one too much fine work for me to handle. One lady was making a lace parasol, but it was going to take her almost a year to finish everything she needed for it.

Afterwards, we headed back to Bayeux again, because we wanted to hear the organ in the cathedral there, and we had found out about the ordination of a priest! The service was open for anyone who wanted to come, so we did. The organ was worth it, though it was an interesting service full of pomp and tradition. Tomorrow I head to the train station to head to my second placement at Chateau d'Acquigny!

Bayeux take two and the Abbey

I wanted another shot at seeing the Cathedral at Bayeux, so Katie took me into town again to try our luck. We visited the Conservatoire de la Dentelle (Lace Conservatory) where there are lots of examples of lace and there are artisans working on producing lace by hand like they used. I bought a little piece to keep.They used to have loads of lace making ladies in this region of France. The ladies working asked that we not take photos, though.

Square in front of the Cathedral, next to the Conservatoire.

We poked around in a few antique shops nearby, and then gave the cathedral a try. Yet again, it was during service time, so I didn't really get a chance to see the interior. But the outside looks pretty spiffy!

The scaffolding is for restorations that they hope
to have at a reasonable point for the 70th anniversary
of the invasion of Normandie next year.

Sunday morning I went with Monsieur to mass at the Abbaye de Mondaye. I'd never actually been to a Catholic mass before, so the whole experience was rather interesting. It felt disrespectful to take photos so close to the service time with my enormous camera, so I don't have any to show. I've never seen so many priests in one spot in person before!

Fete de la musique

The entire country of France celebrates music in the streets on the solstice every year. The sun rose at 5:47 am and officially set at 9:58 pm. It's light out both before and after the official times, though. After work and dinner, I went into town with Katie and Lydie to see what was going on for the festival in Bayeaux.

The trusty tour bus and it's lovely driver.

Lots of bands in the street.

I wouldn't say that any of the groups we heard were super amazing, but all of them were solid and quite enjoyable to listen to. I'll say, though, that never in my life have I heard so many renditions of both "Hey Jude" and "Eye of the Tiger." At least one had an accordion involved.

Katie and Lydie! These ladies are the coolest.

There were some serious crowds.

It took forever for us to wind our way past each group in our explorations. The crowds were thick, and no one wanted to move from their spot in front of each group.

We had buckets of fun. Also, people drink coffe in France ridiculously late at night and it gives me the caffeine jitters just watching it.

Qu'est-ce que j'ai trouve?

Wednesday, I got the challenge of a new topiary style: the cone. I found this to be much easier than all previous forms, though I forgot to provide photographic proof. My camera is a bit large to carry with me all the time. You'll just have to trust me on this one for now. I also go to take a fun ride on the back of a tractor to one of the further reaches of the garden to do some weeding with Katie and Lydie. Lydie works in the garden Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and has a dog that could be Hercule's twin. 

I'll have to take a photo sometime
where you can actually see her face.

Usually I've been working off by myself with someone checking in to see how things are going, so it was nice to get to work with the ladies. The time passes a lot faster when you can talk and work at the same time. While we were out, we stopped to collect elderflowers for sorbet this weekend. I've always loved ice creams and sorbets, but this is definitely my new favorite flavor.

Thursday morning, I was set to trimming yet again. This time, it was the hawthorn hedge next to the chicken coop. It had gotten overgrown and was reaching out to grab people as they walked past. It was simple enough, a straight vertical wall, but it was rather long and took me until lunch to finish. My arms have gotten a lot stronger already since starting trimming, but man they were tired.

After lunch, I started working in the rose garden. The roses are in full bloom, and so begins the dead-heading. All needs to be perfection for when Madame is in residence for the weekend.

The rose garden is just past the church here.

I was working on cutting the roses that were past their prime when I heard a noise from the other side of the garden. As it was rather insistent, I went to investigate. I'm not sure what I expected, but I found a little cat! As soon as he saw me, he ran towards me and was super lovey. He was quite hungry, and stayed with me all afternoon in the rose garden playing with the falling petals and chasing insects. I dubbed him Monsieur Rosier de Brecy. Not incredibly original, since rosier is a rose bush, but only nobles rate the use of 'de' in their name. 

 

Doesn't this face look noble to you?

I love cats, and it breaks my heart to know that someone abandoned this little guy. He's so sweet, obviously loves people, and is totally litter trained. I'd keep him in my luggage if I could!

From the rosebush where I found him.

He snuggled right in when we brought him inside.
He was obviously meant to be a house cat.

Michel and Katie

Michel (Mee-shell) and Katie (kat-TEE) Ransquin are the live-in caretakers of the chateau, and they are who I spend most of my days here with. They are some of the nicest people I have ever met, and Michel always has a joke to tell. He's also a little obsessed with their dogs, but who wouldn't be?

Especially when they happily do things like this.
Michel tells me they happily sat there to be wheeled
around the courtyard and wanted more when he stopped.

They like animals. A lot. They've got two dogs, Tara and Hercule, three cats, and two birds.

The birds are pretty hilarious when they get to talking.

Tara the brindled Am. Staff. Terrier,
Hercule the Fox Terrier, and Phoebus the Chartreux.
The other two cats are the same breed.

Michel does some of the hedge trimming (Who doesn't? There's way too much to go around), sells the tickets when the garden is open for visitors, and is kind-of a butler when the owners are here. He loves to bike, often going 150 km in a day! I'm not sure I've ever seen him be serious about anything outside of his butler duties.

Sorry grandma, but Katie is the best cook I've ever met! She makes it all look so simple, too. Thankfully, she's happy to share recipes with me. Katie does all the cooking, helps out in the garden a few days a week, and helps the maid with the laundry and cleaning duties. She has also been my extremely gracious personal tour bus driver!

They have been so welcoming, I feel like part of their family. They keep telling me I speak French really well, but I they're just as awesome at explaining the unfamiliar things and being human dictionaries when we don't have the paper one. It's quite a skill.

Michel adores his iPhone, and LOVES
to plays with photos on it. I can hardly
look at him with a straight face.

The reality of history

Sunday brought more D-Day history into reality for me. Katie and I visited the Point du Hoc, where the German soldiers had fortified and assumed was unassailable. Located in between the two American landing beaches, they were to use their guns to cover the beaches against allied assault. A crazy group of Rangers had other ideas.

 

The terrifying thing about this is that
I'm pretty sure this area was flat before the war.

I don't feel that any of the photos that I took can really express how dramatic this site is. One can read in a book, "The rangers advanced on the German bunkers, hiding in the craters from previous bombing attacks on the site" and not really comprehend what it means. These things were enormous!

I saw the sign explaining the danger of possible explosives
still existing in the soil AFTER I got out of the crater.
I had made sure to choose a well traveled one, though.

There were a number of the bunkers still in pretty decent condition that were open for people to explore. I wouldn't have wanted to live in these things, they're far too dark and cramped. But I'm sure I wouldn't want my windows and fresh air so much if I was getting bombed.

The whole site with its cliffs on the ocean was really quite beautiful. It must have been an awfully difficult climb up the steep sides for those Rangers, though.

Some of the gun installations look less bellicose and more artful than they used to, I'm sure. I can only assume the notches around the outside are for a gear apparatus for turning a very large gun used to blow people up. It looks much more peaceful than all that.

I'd hang out here.

After we walked through the whole site and marveled at the destruction, we headed over to the American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer. We walked through the grounds first before going through the exhibits at the visitor center. 

Statue at the Memorial.

The memorial located at the head of the cemetery is extremely well done. As well as being pleasing to the eye, it had maps on the walls detailing the events of the war in Europe, and on either side of the maps a narrative. On one side, it was in English, and the other side had the same narrative in French.

Tracking the troop movements throughout the war in Europe.

Just behind the memorial is The Garden of the Missing. Divided by military branch, and then alphabetically, this garden lists the names, jobs, ranks and provenance of each soldier that was missing in action in the region. The photo below is only a small portion of the garden, and it's pretty much solid writing on that wall of names.

The grounds there are immaculately kept, and I marveled at the detailed hand labor that much go into every marker. There is an edged square at the base of each headstone of empty soil and every one I saw was perfect. No weeds, so overgrown grass. Note that each one of these 9,000+ graves has this, and they must be edged by hand. I appreciate the work, but I'm not sad I don't have to do that piece of maintenance.

After our time marveling at the grounds, Katie and I went through the visitor center. They had computers in both languages where you could search for people buried in the cemetery, and each name in the computer had a lot of information linked about their division, what its particular tasks were, and if they had the information, about the soldier as an individual. The exhibits began with a video (in English and subtitled in French) talking about the events of the war, and really focused on a few individuals and their roles in the war. After, was a grand room full of exhibits like the one below. They really outdid themselves with the dual-language presentation, and the whole exhibit was extremely well done.

Thie one was titled Practicing. In between the English word
and its French translation, there was another related word that is the
same in both languages, tying them together. 

After the exhibits, there was a final room where the names of the fallen were read over a speaker, and in the center was this haunting tribute.

I almost lost it when I saw this.

Around the edges of the same room were these plaques telling the individual stories of those who participated in the war. Most of them died, but some of them made it home. I really enjoyed the way they presented this though. It was a very personal way to connect the fact that the soldiers in the war were in fact real people, with real families at home, and terrible things personally happened to all of them. All while you're taking these in, there are still the names of the fallen being read.

I was thoroughly impressed with both sites, but especially with the planning and execution of the exhibits at the American Cemetery. What an amazing tribute to their defense of freedom.