Happy Mid-Summer to all of you!

Les and I are reporting in on our fifth week here in Languedoc, France. We are happy to say that we are "bien installes chez nous" (all the major painting is done, and only little mini projects remain), and are really enjoying our life here in Laurens.

We started and fnished our week with concerts: the first in a lovely church in Lunas, the second in a the caveau of a vineyard in a town right next door. The mid-week highlight, however, was right here on our terrace. We've been watching the hirondelles (swallows) do their swoop and swirl every night on the terrace. Since our arrival June 18, we've loved watching them feed their babies, who were nesting in the rafters of the stone house across the canal from us. The parents poke their heads into the holes of the house under the eaves, put there especially to attract these insect eaters. On Wednesday night, all of a sudden we noticed that the babies were OUT--we could see them in the tree next to the house's roof, outlined by the setting sun. Then, when we got out the binoculars, we saw them all over the tiled roof. Little moving specks...After a while, somebody gave a signal, and whoosh.....off they all went into the sky, in a perfect mini-swoop to match their elders. It was really spectacular. We are so glad we saw this! Check out our album labelled "Week 5" and look for the specks on the roof.

Our weekend started Friday with a visit from our friend Benedicte, who was our au pair girl when Whitney (now 39) was 2 and Brett (now 42) was 5. We make an effort to keep in touch and manage to see her at least twice while we're here in the summer. After a walk-through of our finally finished and finally clean house, we had a lovely lunch at our nearby vineyard restaurant. We will be spending August 15, a national holiday, with them at their summer home in L'Aveyron, and look forward to seeing some of their family then as well.

Saturday morning we took off for Provence, a place dear to our hearts. We started our nostalgia trip in St. Remy de Provence. We took our children to St. Remy for a stay in a villa about 13 years ago, and have revisited this town with friends several times since. From there, we went on to Cadenet, a little hill town where we summered twice, once with friends and once with our children and their spouses, and our grandson Jackson, at the time 3. We were pleased to find that both towns have prospered and are still the lovely places we remembered.

Our last stop on Saturday was L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Provence's antique mecca, and the prettiest town in Provence, we think. The Sorgue is a shallow river, with a swift current, and the river snakes its way through the town in many little streamlets and streams. It's full of bridges, and walkways, and beautiful flowers. Somehow it became a huge antique center, and many of the shops are in galeries bunched together in a park-like setting. These do not have our favorite "vide-grenier" prices, though! Beautiful things at beautiful prices....we'll stick to our bargains! Take a look at this week's album to get an idea of how gorgeous this town is. The market was especially nice, with real quality items, antique and not.

We stayed near the antiques town, and on Sunday drove down to Aix-en-Province, the birth place of Paul Cezanne, specifically to go to half of an art exhibition entitled "L'Atelier du Midi" (The workshop of the South). The Aix museum's focus (Cezanne to Matisse) was on form, and walked you through how the painters got from Impressionism to modern art (Picasso, Dali, De Stael, Picabia, Camoin, Renoir, Degas, etc....) The Marseille museum (from Van Gogh to Bonnard) hosts the companion exhibition, and we're thinking of taking the train to Marseille to see it in the next few weeks. We have several other art museums we will visit this summer as well, including a newly renovated musuem of modern art in Berlin, where we're going July 29-Aug. 3.

Since I'm done painting, I've had some time for walks within our own little town, and have included some new pictures on this week's album. I've discovered it's a multi-layered town...it too has many water features because of the 3 canals that join together here, and the tiny Naubine River too. Although not as spectacular as L'Isle-sur-la-Sorge, it's ours and we love it! The town "fete" is coming up this weekend, and there's a jazz night on Thursday.

We hope your summer is going well, and not too fast! Much love to all of you, and keep in touch!

Love,

Elise & Les