oct 15, Last day in Dordogne

the cemetery down the road from our gite

The graveyard that looked like a garden center

Sven Haakanson's fish-eye lens--cool!

Last day in Dordogne, we drove to a village that duplicated one from 1900 but decided that it was too expensive and too cold to enjoy so we continued onto lunch and lineuil, where the Vezere and the Dordogne rivers meet.

We threw bread scraps at some uninterested swans then climbed up more winding alleys lined with potted flowers into a ghost-town of shuttered houses.
Faced with the choice of finding another cave for which the reviews were mediocre or a garden near our cottage, we chose the latter and were pleased with our decision. The Eyrignac Manor Gardens, 3 stars on the Michelin guide, has won many awards and has been advertised as the nicest garden in Perigon. It has English, French, and Italian elements with good bi-lingual explanations for why the English trim their boxwood and yew in a somewhat less precise manner than the French, who like to see the exact contours of the rounds, squares, and cones of the boxwood from the ground floor of their manners.

Also, most of the trees at the manor and gardin were labeled which catered to my obsession with naming plants--yew, blue cedar, cypress, tulip tree,hornbeams, walnut, mulberry, acacia, and sweetgum. 

Throughout the garden was a temporary exhibit of the work of Dietrich Klinge consisting of two dozen or so  sculptures that appeared to be made of wood. They had been created from wood carvings and then cast in bronze. The bark of the trees gave texture to the primitive expressionistic figures.

A small chapel with three seats graced the courtyard. Eilidh, Bella and I sat in the chapel and when their mom and dad got their we told them, "sorry, the church is full."

at home, Sven and Balika packed while the kids and I had acorn wars  on the trampoline, got ourselves dizzy twirling on the swing, and had spitting contests with grape seeds.