Author: Heather Robinson

Shhh…I am not really here. See, that is me pedalling like mad to head on over to my guest post for the charming Sara in Le Petite Village. Would you like to join me? Please do, I saved some of my favorite landscape photos from our recent trip to the Upper Luberon for exactly this moment.

And yet…I couldn’t let you go without giving a crucial peony update. Because who in their right mind could have ever guessed that these gussied up blooms would shift from this…

…to this…

…and finally…to this! A case of blonde ambition if ever there was one.

Not to mention solid proof that true beauty never fades, it simply changes.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend ahead. May you zoom into delightful surprises…

…such as this fantastic pop-up card that my friend Jeanne at Collage of Life sent, along with the ever wonderful gift of music. Good to keep sending song along so…

…this is a track brought to me by Suze at Subliminal Coffee. Enjoy!

But what are you still doing here? 

Go on over to my guest post…Now ‘git!

I often bemoan the difficulties with my memory. Words, in either English or French, are almost there but disappear with the wisp of a powder puff. In their stead, I will pounce upon useless details that serve nothing. At times I am fearful for the future, wondering if there will be nothing left but dust. And so I document, in thoughts and pictures, events that I would be better off simply enjoying, in order to safe guard them somewhere. An external hard drive of my life.

And yet there can be certain upsides to my state. I keep my favorite novels on the shelf, knowing that I will be able to reread them anew with only the vaguest recollections, touch points of a ship bobbing on the tide. I experienced a similar moment of “oh, yes” today at the market, watching a young woman tuck a paper-wrapped bouquet of peonies under her arm. “I love peonies,” I remembered. 

And so I walked up past the baskets of strawberries to the flower stand for the first time in months, since autumn, having let orchid statues fill the vases past their winter due date. The seller smiled with surprise to see me. “It has been a long time.” It has, I nodded. He knows that I prefer lighter colors, white whenever possible, yet steered me towards coral tight-fisted blooms. As I was preparing to pay, he turned as he often does to grab their paler cousins and wrapped them too, a gift. “They won’t last past the weekend anyway.” I gave my sincere thanks, for that is what they were and wished him a Bon Weekend.

Arriving back at the apartment, I stacked my red peppers and tomatoes, leaving the flowers for last, until even after having wiped down the kitchen. I reached up into the glass cabinet to bring down the right vases and trimmed the stems. Lowering the bouquets into water, I arranged them with tiny pushes, a balancing act and was content with my work. Content with the soft feathering petals and light smoke of fragrance. Content in recognition, the pleasure of forgetting.

Camelot, my Camelot…a castle to call my own…or just…a cabanon.

I was thinking earlier today that my life has hardly been linear. And while I know in my head that every moment has been a result of a previous choice plus the occasional bolt of luck, looking back it does seem all over the map. Literally. Nomad me, even in society.

So perhaps that is why I long for something solid, a little hideaway to call my own where I can live as I please. One that won’t suddenly disappear and will offer the same joys year after year.

My companion, whose jolts and dashes have been erratic as mine, feels the same. So we go hunting, cabanon hunting in Provence. It seems the perfect landscape, lavender fields, olive groves. And there they are, those often abandoned buildings, small enough to be our doll’s house. Just the size for dreaming and an afternoon nap.

We scour them out, we chase across distant fields to find them. In our minds we fix them up, we argue over where the kitchen would go. We own them even if it is only in our cabanon dreams.

I don’t need a castle. Nor perfection or idealism. No swords drawn out of a rock. Or miracles at all save for the everyday kind…

Shaking out the sheets on a line, pulling tomatoes, toes buried in the grass next to the one I love.

I am not there yet, but I am not far either. If my life has not been linear, who knows, perhaps I am closer than I think?

Today’s post was my little “Hello!” as part of the series By Invitation Only, in which bloggers around the world share their interpretations on a common theme, this month’s being “Camelot.” 

To see the other wonderful posts, please do click here. There are such talented women in this group and we will be on break until September. 

Come on, there is nothing wrong with dreaming is there?

Kipling swivelled his ears forward, tracking the prickly peals of tiny laughter rolling towards us. Two young girls, perhaps three and five years old, had escaped their parents grasp and were running free, ecstatic and hiccuping with joy. But they were far, too far away as anyone who knows this busy street could tell. So did an elderly lady facing them. Her stooped back was towards me and yet I could feel her smile as she carefully bent down, arms wide. A dance step to the left, then the right to corral the two with upturned faces. Delighted. There was a pause of recognition, a bounce back and forth between the aged and ageless. Was this their Grandmother? She clearly felt so much love for them. The father came up in a lope of a jog. Merci, merci. He nodded knowing that she understood and scooping up his wriggling captives under his arms, turned and went on his way. The women straightened up for just a moment then watched them go.

Listen to this lovely song: Caminho Do Vento by Nei Zigma

*Award alert! Please feel free to tune out until tomorrow if that is not your cup o’tea*

Do you know Loree? She has a lovely blog Stories and Scribbles, where she delves into her life on the island of Malta. Isn’t that exotic? I find it so. She is a wonderful writer and photographer and so I was delighted that gave me the Liebster Award–yes, especially as it means “dearest.” Now, I think that this is the third or fourth time that I have been given this award by one of my peers but that doesn’t make it any less special, no. As I have said here before, we all like to be appreciated. I am fortunate in having you all–a very expressive and brilliant bunch! But not that long ago, as La Contessa recently pointed out, there would maybe be five comments, maybe two. So, while not one to follow rules, I would be delighted to answer Loree’s questions and pass on a few blogs to you.

Loree’s Questions: