Feed the Birds

The first morning we wake up in England is at the tail-end of the recent heatwave on this side of the Atlantic, and it feels stuffy inside.  J and I go out to eat breakfast on a bench overlooking the harbor.  It's cool and overcast now, and it's such a relief after the constant sweating of the past week.  The sound of squawking seagulls interrupts the morning peace.  I look just to my left and point out to J that the seagulls must be hoping for a few droppings as the bins are emptied.

This man's partner walks toward us to empty another bin and stops to shoot the breeze.

"We feed the baby seagulls every morning."

So they're not just hoping for accidental droppings; they're flying in for a breakfast buffet they know to expect.

"Seagulls are smarter than you think.  Sometimes people put bags on the top of the bins to keep them from getting in, and we've seen them go flying straight into them to knock them off the top."

"Sometimes we have to break up fights between the seagulls and the crows."

My mind conjures up a picture of rival gangs in West Side Story, and I'm reminded that every life and every job has something interesting to lighten the load.  It makes me happy that these men spend their mornings feeding the birds while they keep the harbor clean.

Sunset at Fécamp

K.J. drives us up the cliffside in Fécamp to watch the sunset one night, scheduled for 10:09 p.m. according to our phones.  We pass a chapel, Église Notre-Dame-du-Salut.  It seems like every church we visit on this trip is a tribute to "our lady" Mary.  We park across the street from graceful windmills I spotted earlier in the day behind the hill.  Cows are grazing beneath them, and the light is so perfect, my photography-loving heart is jumpy with excitement.

There's a viewing spot for looking out over Fécamp down the street from the car park.  I especially love the tower on St. Stephen's church in the town.  If a church must be called after a saint, Stephen is a good choice; I don't think I've ever seen a St. Stephen's before.

We walk along a grassy path and find a good spot for K.J. to set up a time-lapse video.  The English Channel stretches out silvery blue before us, and the white cliffs on our right extend as far as our eyes can see.  The breeze moves the grass gently, and the seagulls are calling.

K.J. preached Psalm 19 just the day before this, and he told us how if you could scoop up a bucketful of the sun, that one bucketful would weigh more than the earth and everything on it.  I love getting to see a glimpse of our big star on this clear night.  I look at my watch when it disappears below the horizon, and it is 10:10 p.m. 

We walk back to our car under a violet sky, and I stop to take a picture of the cows under the windmill because I know my mom would like it.

May Flowers in Paris

The last time I saw Paris was on Leap Day, but I thought it would be fun to re-visit the city through pictures from May Day 2018.  

The first of May is France's Labor Day, and on this holiday I walk to meet friends from church to play games in the park.  Parc Monceau is so green and filled with bright flowers of all colors.  I pass a stand on our street corner where a lady sells Lilies of the Valley.  I learn these delicate white flowers are given as gifts on May Day here.

The stone bridge and big knobby trees are perfection.

James always finds a stick wherever we go.

I miss the green leafy trees hanging over the streets of Paris, though I am happier living with more of the sky than what can be seen between buildings and trees.

À bientôt, Paris.

April Armchair Traveling

Yesterday I spent some time looking at pictures from April 2015 for an Instagram account I started a few years ago.  We've been able to visit so many beautiful places in the past 5 1/2 years, and I liked the idea of having a place to catalog some of those lovely landscapes and details.  Early on I fell into the habit of only posting pictures from the same month of previous years.  I love following the movement of the seasons in pictures.

The first April day I re-visited was a Friday when I think we had a church meeting wrapping up our Easter Holiday Bible Club in North Yorkshire.  K.J. drove with the kids while I took my camera and walked on a public footpath behind the kids' school because I'd caught a glimpse of lambs earlier in the day.  This was our first spring in North Yorkshire, and I was terrified I'd somehow miss lambing season.  The thing about seasons is that they come once a year, and then they're gone.  You have to pay attention in the moment.  I'm happy to report I didn't miss out on frolicking lambs in 2015.

In addition to photographing lambs, I grew slightly obsessed with bees going about their business (beez-iness, bizzzz-iness?) in the spring and summer.  England's moderate climate, and the English genius about gardening means flowers that don't prematurely wither away.  They last so much longer than in Alabama.  I spent a lot of time that first summer watching the bees in the lavender outside my kitchen window while I washed dishes.  

I got this lucky shot experimenting with the macro function on one of my lenses at Newby Hall.  It still brings me a lot of joy.  I also got a lot of joy watching these lambs play follow the leader that day.

Ella took ballet lessons in a small village nearby, and while I usually went back home while she had her lesson, one April day I took a walk instead, exploring a public footpath.  I was captivated to live in a place that had ridings.

But of course the most magical April night of all was when our entire family got to be present for the birth of twin lambs at a local farm. I was over the moon that night.

That seems like a good stopping place for now.  Thanks for coming armchair traveling with me.  It's fun to re-live past Aprils and to look forward to the day we can leave our houses and do some exploring once more.

Parc de Sceaux

The morning is rainy and the sky completely covered in clouds when I walk to the train station to travel to the south side of Paris.  A friend and I are meeting to try to catch the infamous Parc de Sceaux cherry blossoms at their peak moment.  The beauty of blossoms is fleeting, so we are proceeding with our plan even though the weather is bleak.  I'm a little anxious when I switch from one RER line to another, wondering if my ticket really carries me this far into the city.  Surely they wouldn't want me to leave the station for a new ticket when my connecting train was just beside the old one, though... 

I make it to my destination without any run-ins with SNCF agents and walk through a light downpour, listening to directions from Google maps through my earbuds.  I hope it stops raining long enough to get out my camera.  The park is much bigger than I expect, and I'm not quite sure which direction the cherry grove is in, so I start walking.  It's empty on this wet day.  Only the most dedicated runners are on the gravel paths.

I pass a singing robin.

The rain stops.

I follow a sign for les toilettes and discover the chateau.  It looks exactly as I imagine one mentioned in A Tale of Two Cities.

Finding the restrooms requires a lot of walking and the confusion of figuring out the way the French use arrows on signs.  French arrows never seem to be straightforward.  

I see a red squirrel.  A friend in England told me the North American squirrel had all but run the red squirrel off that island.  

It's spring, and this one is carrying her new baby.

I meet my friend, and we begin exploring  l'Orangerie.  The flowers are gorgeous.

The floppiness of the poppies is my favorite.  They're such a delicate flower.

We begin the long walk to the cherry trees.  This estate is truly vast!  I love that it is now a public park.  This kind of place is such a refuge from sirens and honking horns, and as Anne says, "There's so much scope for the imagination!"

The cherry grove is a truly magical place on this quiet misty morning, and we realize it's a gift to be there without the thousands of other Parisians that will flock to see the blossoms.

Don't you want to plant a cherry orchard now?  The twisty, knobby branches have such character; it's such a satisfyingly shaped tree.

Though they aren't at peak bloom, we walk through a grove of trees with white blossoms as we leave the park.

This outing is worth my completely soaked boots, that are apparently not waterproof.