A Little Corner of France

Hello Everyone,

So I am just about back into the swing of things and now slightly readjusting…ahem…my idyllic vision of Britain with jolly Bobbies on the Beat….to incorporate fully armed police units, frustrated and enraged youths, burning buildings and spluttering Tories…

‘Jeruslalem’ aint playing anymore…

But I did promise you a little glimpse of France…

Brittany, to be specific.  The beautiful North-Western corner of France where buildings are made from gentle colored stone…

That look so warm and pleasing in the afternoon sun …

The windows, like the buildings, are uniformly tall and narrow…

And the iron work wraps itself casually around a building…

Or graces a front door without a song and a dance…

And those doors…Oh those doors – beautiful, heavy, engraved wooden doors… always painted and looking better for being a little worse for wear…

…and of course, there are those gorgeous dormer windows that seem to be two a penny in this neck of the woods….giving the roofline a little extra interest and height and making that attic space work for it’s money…

There is a real uniformity about this place – everything pulled together and consistent…

Take the blue and white enamel house numbers – everyone seems to have one – and they are just lovely…

And when it comes to planting – there seems to be a natural collective leaning towards hollyhocks, hydrangeas, geraniums…tickling first floor windows everywhere I look…

And the placement of trees is uniformly so fabulously disciplined, they create the true meaning of the word ‘avenue’…

The French just know how to pull things together…they just know…

You only have to glance into the window of any patisserie to see that…

Even the displays in the shop windows are done with some flair…palette, oils, tortured soul and all…

The plain fact of the matter is that the French….dammit…are just effortlessly stylish.

For sure there must be some ugly places, somewhere in Brittany…believe me, I was really searching…but I have to say, I was hard pressed to come up with anything on the duff side of gorgeous…

Here in California, where I live, everything is relatively SO much newer – it’s just a tiny baby compared with Brittany.

And in this new land, everyone has their own idea of what sort of house they want to live in,  they are all pursuing their own dream…

I have said this before, it is not unusual here to walk down a street and see a craftsman house, next to a mediterranean, next to a ranch-style, next to a colonial, next to a modern box, next to an igloo…

The individual has conquered.

But back in Brittany…old as the hills, what can I say… beautiful, stylish and most of all pulled together by an invisible collective hand.

I will be back very soon,

Ros

ps Welcome to all those people from Sarah’s lovely Beach Cottage.

pps. If you would like me to add someone to my email notification list, just send their email address to roswyatt@greenplumdesign.com – thanks for all the ones you have already sent – they are plugged into the system and ready to go!