Garden Relief (in photos)

By: Nicholas

Abroad a month and that was just the beginning . Through my words I have done my best to recreate for you the feelings France has brought to me. My attention focused on the moment I am in, I have experienced each scent, sight and sound as purely as one can. I have worked to capture the essence of each place and pass it on through written language. Unfortunately today, I cannot bring to life the past two weeks in this same way.

When the mind's race is at rest, the world shines with a deeper brightness. At times though, thoughts do not easily accept peace. My life situation is changing and fear stirs with the uncertainty. My discomfort is expressed through my inner voice's old patterns. A carousel of illusions, memories and plans have been preventing me from completely connecting. The chateau in Sacy le Petit deserves a description that tickles the senses, but I have been too far removed to receive the place's inspiration. The obstacle that I face will become more clear with time, but for now I will only share some things in and around the garden that have temporarily given me relief from my burdened brain. 

Plums

Jam Making: Bringing the attention to the hands, we first prepare the fruit by taking out the innards. 

Seething the medieval way is sort of like milking the fruit for juice-leaving behind the skins and sometimes worms!

Add heat

The backyard of Chateau de Sacy, a great place to read and nap

A single rose blooms between the thorns, growing and wrapping  around an iron heart

With Jennifer's table tennis skill growing exponentially it is easy to forget that carrier pigeons once roosted in that background tower waiting for their next delivery assignment  

My competitive opponent Lloyd. Probably allowing recreation to create room for inspiration before our next ping-pong match.

I enjoyed listening to Lloyd Durling describe his work. As he told of his ideology and inspirations, I observed the philosophy and thought come to life off the barn wall.

Making games out of cracking walnuts with our newly graduated college-bound Connor

Hello tall sharp tool. Help Nick invent a path through the Forest garden

The whole body's rhythm  provides meditation for the spirit

Escape the Chateau to pick up warm milk and fresh eggs from the farm  

What better for relaxation than helping life to succeed  

What better to help life succeed than providing warm loving words

Not too close to the barn, yet

BBQ dinners are the best time to listen to Hermine's stories of  un-welcomed artists needing a literal kick in the butt to be removed  from the chateau 

Hermine's connection with the grounds stems from childhood play with the gardeners daughter and a young love with the bakers son

She has grown with the land and her dedication to it is apparent everywhere. For instance in this archway of green beans

Although these wonders have been fogged by my own seperation, I do not  judge my distracted mind. I am grateful that I am able to sense, from the place between the thoughts, that struggle is not permanent. Life's love is always within. 

The Nest

by Jennifer

While weeding the potager and preparing it for new seeds, Nick and I came across 3 baby cherry trees. Beautiful and strong in their adolescents, we wanted them to flourish, to grow, to one day produce fruit and shade for wwoofers to come. With permission from Hermine, Nick began the process of transplanting them near the field with a couple apple and quince trees. When planting a baby tree, you must put a gate or barrier up to protect if from outside sources and keep it safe from harm. After transplanting the first cherry tree, Nick and Hermine wrapped around a thin green wire fence three times. I felt bad for the tree, looking imprisoned inside the metal gate. But it did need protection.

The next morning Hermine showed me a page from a French gardening magazine with a picture and the caption "Des bordures en lianes de clematite". Hermine to me, "You see those sticks there (pointing outside the window to a big pile)? Can you do this here, make this like this in this magazine? Do you think?" and her words hung there, waiting for me. My French is pretty cursory, at best, and I knew I wasn't going to be able to read the article. I tried to translate at least the caption on the internet, but it was no good. I put the computer away and went outside to stare at the pile. How was I going to make a fence out of this? I took a crafts class in college where I learned how to basket weave, but that was using a large needle and also some raffia to wrap the cord. Here I just had branches. 

I found six sturdy and straight sticks and hammered them into the ground in the shape of a circle. I picked up the clematite branches and started weaving. I figured I'd make it up as I went along, like everything else I do. And it worked. I kept going. I wove pieces into each other and slowly, I was erecting the nest. Over three days and tens of splinters, it was created. From nothing, something came. 

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

the boys made me get inside the nest, like a little egg

Me and the nest, Nick and his cherry tree

While making the nest I listened to music. Lady Gaga made me miss my friends, dancing, and wearing heels. Bruce Springsteen asked me if I was ready to prove it all night while I pulled clematite through itself, layer by layer. Sam Cook sang sad love songs into my ear while I wrapped the wood around sticks, as tightly and securely as I could, to maximize structural integtiry. I thought about home, my family, about saying goodbye, and about what might lay ahead of me. 

The irony was not lost on me. I was making a nest, lovingly, for the tree. A home, a safe haven, protection from the elements. I was making a nest for the tree, painstakingly, and then I would leave. Protecting everything and everyone around me, I had no home myself. 

When the nest was complete we picked it up and moved it over top of the tree Nick had planted so delicately. We hammered the six sticks into the ground and the nest was secure. We took some photographs and walked away from the tree and the nest. It's been raining since then, watering the tree and weathering the nest.

Chateau de Sacy

by Jennifer


From Paris we took the train an hour north to the small town of Sacy-le-Petit, in the village of Picardie. Chateau de Sacy stands tall at the entrance to the village, a grand mansion that's too old to know precisely when it was built. Hermine, the owner, tells us it's been in her family for seven generations. Before that, no one who's alive knows its story. But I'm getting ahead of myself. From the train station at Chevriers, we were to walk 5 kilometers to the chateau. With our packs. In the hot sun. Nick was in charge of hitching us a ride while I was trying to keep upright with my pack on, opening and closing my fists to try to get the circulation back in my arms that the shoulder straps of my green Kelty cut off. After a handfull of failed attempts, my body was waining under the pressure. I stood in front of Nick as a car approached and stuck my leg out in addition to my thumb. The man pulled over. He spoke French, and very quickly, but we understood that he was going the other direction from us, though he would take us as far as he could. I climbed in the back and Nick got in the front seat. The man spoke on, in French, and I kept nodding, saying "oui", and "bon" a lot, too tired to translate. His humanitarianism took over and he kept on driving past his turn. We arrived at Chateau de Sacy, greatful and exhausted. 


Through the giant ancient iron gates we walked back in time. The chateau stood tall and wide, with ivy flourishing and strong pale green wooden shutters, framing the thick old glass windows and into the dark rooms. I couldn't wait to explore. We had tea with Hermine, the 69 year-old French woman who runs the chateau, and Connor, the barely 18 year-old from upstate New York, a fellow wwoofer. After tea he showed us around and I fell in love with each step. In the rustic kitchen the paint had chipped and worn away on the outfacing wall to reveal the stones and mud concrete the original builders used. The varying shapes and sizes of the stones are an al fresco mosaic, striations forming fossils of the history of Chateau Sacy. Down the hall is Hermine's office, painted a warm sunflower yellow, a green and masculine billiards room, and my favorite room on the ground floor, the drawing room, outfitted with turn of the century red velvet couches and intricate regal apholstered chairs.  A thick but buckling creamy wallpaper with faded green and yellow floral design covers the walls, and giant gold gilded mirrors hanging off the walls somewhat precariously, while a white marble fireplace adorned with a porcelain bust sits opposite the door. A room so grand you feel the need to whisper inside it. The chateau holds two more floors, and my room is reminscent of Van Gogh's spare but lovely one with colorful walls, high ceilings, and a giant window. 

reading in the kitchen

Hermine is such a character I often can't believe I'm not reading about her in a book, but she's really here, doing and saying unpredictable things and running the grand maison. In her past lives she was a tightrope walker, a singing sensation (largely in Japan), and who knows what else. She's now the wife of famed English writer Hugo Williams, among other things. It's all there on Wikipedia if she's too "bored" (one of her favorite words) to tell you herself. She has rules for eating, like no butter on your bread at lunch or dinner ("daft Americans, it's just not done in France!") and if I get the wrong plates when I set the table ("those aren't for potatos, we're not having stew!") I get yelled at. She's interesting, scatterbrained, and always busy running around talking (to you or herself?). When she gives you a job in the morning she follows or proceeds it with "If it's not too boring" or "Can you face it? Is it too terrible?", and you do it, and hope it's how she likes, and that at the end she says "Ah, bon" and not "Oh, no! What have you done?!" which can sometimes be the case. 


The jobs we do are fairly easy. Weeding the potager (kitchen garden), planting new seeds (winter lettuce and beans), and clearing the paths from place to place. The landscape is vast and beautiful, with the potager, an open field, a small field of rasberries, a tree-lined square, a secluded path throughout the back of the garden, and beyond a locked old wooden door, the secret garden, or what Hermine calls the forest garden. At the edge of a wheat field, it has mostly weeds, but also a beautiful path (thanks to Nick) as well as a black plum tree and some small wild flowers. All the greens are lined with quaint rectangular english bushes, like a maze. Hundred years old pear trees, apple trees, and plum trees pepper the property, as well as a mulberry tree, red and white currants, roses, herbs, and flowers. The Chateau is quiet and serene, the only thing to interrupt you are the birds singing to each other and the occasional wild French cat.


I've made rose hip jelly, plum jam, and apple sauce with fresh ingredients harvested from the garden. An ordeal, I quite like making jam, and love the look on someone's face when they're enjoying it. After work I like to read at the yellow table with one chair hidden in the back corner of the property among the trees. We play table tennis with Lloyd Durling, the English artist in residence (who's said my rose hip jelly is the best he's had), and John, the English cyclist who's also wwoofing. I spend time gazing out my giant window, breathing in the fresh summer air, while the boys play French Billiards. 

Collecting apples for applesauce 

When I'm in the kitchen alone I look into the beautiful antique tin boxes full of tea, sugar, and coffee. I fantasize about what I would do if the Chateau were mine. The changes I would make and the things I wouldn't dare to touch. I picture myself walking around the big empty house in winter, clutching a sweater close the my neck, in wool slippers, tending to the fire in the drawing room and gazing out at the gray white sky deciding whether or not it will snow. Is this life in my future? Only time will tell.