En route: Villandry

Travelling back from the Dordogne to Mont Louis sur Loire, we stopped for lunch at a little bistro ,and discovered the Villandry gardens and Chateau. 

An imaginative twentieth century re-creation of a renaissance castle garden. The moated Chateau dates from c1536 and had a formal garden in the eighteenth century. The present garden dates from the years after 1906 when it was bought by a Spaniard, Dr Joachim Carvallo. Inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, he wished the garden to have a sixteenth century character. Great horticultural skill was deployed, especially in the use of vegetables. An arbour of grape vines leads to a great parterre, conceived as a Garden of Music. On the other side of the canal is a Garden of Love. Symbolising the moods of love, it looks rectangular from the chateau but is actually trapezoid. The aesthetically designed vegetable garden is based on an illustration from Du Cerceau's Les plus excellents bastiments de France (1576). Despite its origins, Villandry is the work of a twentieth century imagination.

the following images are of architectural elements and fabric textures that I liked inside the Chateau..

en suite bathroom....

Intricate patterns underfoot

 

 

.The unique "Renaissance" gardens of Villandry are among the most fascinating gardens of France and of the World . Villandry’s Ornamental Gardens ,water Garden ,Herb Garden, and kitchen Garden have an international fame...

 

 Most impresive and very inspiring.I would like to go back and spend more time here...must be quite something to see the change of season ...

Col x

all images by: la Brocanteuse

I dedicate this post to Trish from TROUVAIS who encouraged me to start blogging...

Sleepless in ..Stellenbosch

It has been a very busy few weeks...and this  is the  calm still before the storm - the arriving of the container from Belgium with all my French Brocante trouvaille..sleepless nights..excitement..


Both my Dd and husband is down with flu so to not expose me and my vulnerable lungs to being affected as well, they chose rooms far away from me to sleep last night. My husband chose to sleep in the home theater...(I suspect he watched movies right through, therefore he was even more tired this morning.., and Dd took to  her  boudoir all alone. I had the two Afghan hounds; Zirka and Yentl  with me since they can go out on our roofgarden for fresh air and water should they need to..
I could not sleep...tossing and turning, camomile tea, nothing would do it. I have so much on my mind.. Old French Linen.... Old French linen..old French linen...
I wondered how photo's would come out in the soft light of the lamps.. Nanny Mel chose some of my favorite linen for my bed..so I thought I would take a pic of it.
that is how it started.

 
  then,  got out of bed, and without  styling or dusting...without removing anything, took the next images...I chose to be honest about these. 
So there will be clutter around
that I would normally remove before a photograph..but as you can see on the clock... it was in the small hours of the night...not doing that then.Just intrigued with the way the light fell on objects, I snapped a few.

 

 

  

my newest book

 all the above images  of  bedroom by labrocanteuse 

  so long..Col x

to sum up the colors: old gold, pale gold, ivory, 
 old French linen and faded tapestry..is that a color?had some chocolat chaud with a dash,
and fell asleep with the smell of fresh
 old French linen around me...