Elevation seems to be a theme

Soon after Josh finished his trail race in the Alps, we found ourselves at our favourite burger joint in Chamonix. It's called Poco Loco and if you go there I highly recommend the Chèvre burger {it's worth it in cheese alone} and I think the other great one was called the Americano. It had seafood sauce on it-sounds peculiar, was great. 

It is so intriguing and joyful to watch the runners finish the race. They run through wild country. Sometimes it might just be them, the narrow trail and the sound of their own foot falls. They also find themselves in little groups running together for a while, sharing the highs and lows, keeping each other going/sane. The lovely thing about this race was the array of people from different countries. Sometimes people run together without speaking the same language, together in purpose.

When they finish the race they are given glory and an item-of-clothing-present, in this case a bright red vest. This, along with the unsettling amount of gear they run with makes it kind of obvious that they've just finished running and people stop to congratulate everyone. All very civil and generous. 

While we were eating our excellent burgers, a guy from the US started chatting, he was running the following day. This has been a long winded introduction into how I heard about the Brooklyn Grange. This guy's friend had been instrumental in pulling the project together in 2010. Basically, the Grange is an inner city roof top farming initiative. They have one acre in Queens and one and a half in Brooklyn, which is the one I visited. 

This farm, the largest of its kind is on top of the Navy Yards. They produce over 40, 000 pounds {about 18,000kg} per year. When I went there was spinach, kale, basil {green ands he pretty black kind}, various lettuces, a good variety of tomatoes and peppers, eggplant, ground cherries, carrot, raddish, a few chickens, bees and a couple of flowers!

They supply vegetables to restaurants, CSA members and directly to the public via weekly farmstands. They host Wednesday/Sunday dinners on the farm, inviting local chefs to cook up a storm. And roof top yoga, of course. 

The farm is open to visit on Wednesdays from 10am to 5pm they take you up every hour on the hour {last visit at 4pm}. They are good people, enthused, knowledgeable and also just figuring it out as they go, which is my very favourite kind. While I was there I met a Danish beekeeper who was volunteering for the month. I asked them if they needed an extra pair of hands on harvest days etc and they said that they actually have more help than they need at the moment which is so great. 

Go visit! The season is winding up so i think you can visit until the end of October brooklyngrangefarm.com

Loire Valley:::wandering, dreaming

The journey here was a longish one, I flew from Sydney to Paris via Dubai we had a 2 hour delay, then a train to St Pierre des Corps which takes about one and a half hours and a car hire and two hour drive to our home for the week in Chinon which is a pretty cute town, river adjacent and alive enough so that it didn't feel slightly abandoned like some French villages I've seen. 

Our house was great, old but slightly renovated. We had a tiny and wonderful courtyard with high ivy and rose covered walls and a large clump of hydrangeas with a little table and a few reading/breakfasting chairs. Why do roses/hydrangeas/everything grow so well here?! The days were long and summery, lots of good wandering and eating. I was tagging along with some family who were looking at properties in the area so I also saw some great homes. Mostly we looked at formets {spelling may be out} they are French farmhouses. They look adorable from the outside but are kind of cramped, dark and awkward inside. This is mostly due to the fact that heating is expensive and the walls were built really thick, ceilings low and windows kept to a minimum. I think Australia's climate has ruined me for this kind of house. They were a lot of fun to look at and mostly I just enjoyed looking at people's rambling gardens and their house stuff because other people's stuff is intriguing. 

The last property we looked at was somewhat different. It's on 8.5 acres, about half of which is a nicely established garden with pine trees, spruce, roses-various types, hydrangeas, dahlias, windflowers, rhodos, cosmos, a little veggie patch, fig trees as well as an orchard containing red and white currants, pears, apples, walnuts, apricots, plums and cherries. Oh. Ok. It also had a little stable because the previous owner won a donkey at a local donkey winning fete. The donkey has since moved on. The style of house is called a maison de maitre. It's big and lovely and light. It needs a bit of work inside but it's a good sized job, enough to make it interesting but not enough to be a headache [maybe]. An offer was made/the house may change hands. 

We did a bit of sight seeing too, a highlight was the Chateau de Villandry. The gardens were great, there were lovely long avenues of established grape arbours and low espaliered crab apple and pear trees. Also huge rose arbours and some of those French partiere gardens where plots look like mazes and/or hearts, diamonds, crosses etc. I always admire the time and dedication these must take, but their order frightens me. Happily, a later addition was made to the gardens and after wandering through the ordered ornamental vegetable gardens {weird concept} and passed the great lavender mazes you come through a hedge to 'The Cloud Garden.' It was a garden of planned disorder. The plants and flowers were spilling over the paths, butterfly and those hilarious ponderous bumblebees were pottering around. The first garden was all blues and whites, the next one oranges and yellows. 

I can only imagine how pretty it all looks in spring when the pear/apple trees are in blossom---> shall have to revisit. 

Oh! And I almost forgot---> there are ten lilac trees on the property we looked at. They weren't in bloom as I was there in summer but they looked pretty fetching.