Chateau d'Usse

After Villandry we headed over to the Chateau d'Usse.  It is an interesting one because it is still owned by a Duke and his family. There were parts of the chateau that we couldn't go into (we guessed) because the family uses those.

 200 year old trees by the little on-site chapel.

 Basement caverns. Apparently this Chateau historically had a lot of vineyards and made huge quantities of wine. 

 An impressive collection of hunting trophies.

 Formal gardens.

 In one set of towers they had a series of rooms showing scenes from "Sleeping Beauty".

 In the Chapel their was a sign listing recent events there, including weddings and christenings. The most recent one was the christening of the Duke's grand-daughter in 2011. I thought that was a nice touch. Letting people know that this is a family estate and still in use.

 This is the ceiling in the stable! It looks like a work of art.

 I explored the gardens of course.

 My favorite part of the small potager section was looking at the various espaliered trees and how they were trained.

Villandry and The Most Beautiful Gardens I've Ever Visited

The first castle we visited was the one that I was most looking forward to.  I knew that it was supposed to have amazing gardens, but was still blown away by seeing them in person. The most incredible part was this "potager" section. Normally, I think of a potager as a small kitchen garden with a bit of everything growing together in a cozy tangle. The potager at Villandry was nothing like that.  Look at this garden plan!  The most amazing part is that this is not an ornamental garden.  This is a gorgeous garden full of veggies and fruits. 

 I was a little worried that being Fall the garden would be sadly passed it's peak.  It was not in full glory, but still lovely. Tiny boxwood hedges surrounded every plot.  Not a singe weed anywhere in sight. Cabbages, pumpkins, and fruit trees surrounded by flowers.

 They even still had eggplants growing!

 Golden colored celeries and cabbages.  Celery is so hard to grow (at least for me here it has been). And the cabbages! How do they keep them so pristine?

 Rose bushes pruned up tall decorated the corners of beds.

 Espaliered apple trees ran all along the gardens outer borders.

 Swiss chard, curly kale, and leeks

 Purple kale looking tall and vigorous.

 Tomato plants were past their peak and interplanted with basil.

 The ornamental gardens were also perfectly manicured. The guide to the garden says that they have 9 full time gardeners.  That made me feel a little better. 
 The herb gardens were also a treat to look at.

 There was a labyrinth.

 Grandmama and A made it through no problem.

 As I walked through the herb garden I was grateful that I have been working on learning the scientific names of things.

 The shapes! It made me want to plan my herb gardens more thoughtfully. I love the flower borders. I would like to try lavender or rosemary as a border plant since boxwoods are suffering from blight here.

 These bowers were dripping with grapes. I had to reach up and taste one to compare it to our concords. It was much sweeter than concords with a flowery aftertaste.

 And then a few token pictures from inside the castle.  I liked that too, just anti-climactic after the gardens.

 I kept looking out over the gardens from various castle windows.

 Here is a view of the potager from an upper story window.

Arrival in France

Our flights were all on time and we arrived in Paris around the same time as Grandmama and Grandpa J.  Our first stop was the Paris temple, about 45 minutes from the airport. 

 My host parents, JJ and A are working there as missionaries. It was lovely to see them. A perfect welcome to France.

 We had a fun time talking about farming, seeing JJ's book in progress, and hearing about how things work as temple missionaries in Paris.

 They had tons of food for us, snacks and juice, 3 pizzas, farr breton, soup, and a delicious cake.

  They also gave me some presents to help me fit in in France again. They are always so generous.

 We were sad to leave them. The visit was way too short, but we anticipated a 3.5 hour drive to our airbnb lodgings for the night. We reluctantly left around 8pm. We ran into major traffic around 10:30pm on the autoroute. At one point there was a turn ahead and we could see the traffic backed up for miles ahead of us.  We decided to take a detour and got lost on little tiny roads for a few minutes as we disregarded the gps. We used a good old fashioned map, found an alternate route and finally arrived at the airbnb house after midnight. It was an epic drive for 4 people who had been traveling for 24 hours. Luckily all my travels have made me a good "plane sleeper" and I was fairly alert for the drive.  I was holding my breath as I opened the house key box in the dark. I didn't want to have to call the owner after midnight. The code worked perfectly and the lock was easy.

 The house we chose to stay in while visiting the Chateaux of the Loire Valley reminded me of a renaissance building. I am not sure its exact age -- old!  It had three flights of stairs with a bedroom and bathroom at the top of each landing.

 This was big sister A and my room.

 A. watched cartoons in French each day when we came back from our castle visits.

Fall Festival 2019

Instead of a big candy fest aka "Trunk or Treat" we decided to have a Fall Festival at church this year.  Things came together well and everyone did a great job on the roles that were delegated to them.
We had a hayride provided by the farm next door to our church building.

 Their were several different game booths in the various classrooms and hallways. One was an ongoing doughnut eating contest. We bought 8 dozen doughnuts, but only used 6 DOZEN!

 The "fishing" for prizes booth was decorated and at times run by my kiddos. All the kids wanted a chance to be behind the curtain and clip prizes to their buddies' hooks.

 Their was a cupcake walk run by the YW of the church.

 They had made some really pretty cupcakes for the prizes.

 We had a chili cook-off with scoring and voting (anonymously).  We had 11 crockpots of chili to vote on. They were all pretty yummy and nothing was left at the end except a few pieces of cornbread.

There was series of Halloween cartoon movies playing in one room.  All the kids ended up in there while the grown-ups cleaned up. Everyone ate plenty of sugar and had fun with their buddies. We were glad to have cousins there to play too.