From San Francisco to Château de Valmer

When seen from 30,000 feet high the enormity of our human scale settles mentally like thick particulate across the changing landscape, just as our own regional patterns of population and land use do. By plane, bus, car, train, and foot I traveled for 32 hours, my mind whirring from the geographical and cultural slideshow. Heading East from my Pacific flanked Bay Area home I flew over patchwork diagrams of shifting agriculture, open plains, and fanning mountain ranges. I reached Chicago, its dense urban grid outpouring into industrial lines of trade, framed by suburbs and the massive sprawling plantings of the Bread Basket. I continued East, crossing the Atlantic to land in Paris in the rain. The antiquated radial layout of a city built on top of itself for centuries was impressive, with modern day advertisements stuck to it like tags on the bottom of a historically and architecturally priceless shoe - the union of centuries old cityscape with present day.

“Vous êtes Alix?” I asked the woman wearing pink rain boots as I exited the St. Pierre des corps station, outside of Tours. Madame Alix de Saint Venant, a landscape architect and my supervisor for the next month, grabbed one of my bags as she walked me to her car. Apologizing for the state of her “gardener's car,” I assured her that my own looked the same, complete with remnants of soil and the occasional shovel. With jet-lag notably written on my face, we drove through the Loire Valley to the Château de Valmer.

I am currently sitting inside "le ferme" (the farmhouse) of this château, a sixteenth century manor atop an alkaline hillside along a bend in the Loire River, just outside of Chançay, France. Overlooking vineyards, Renaissance styled terraced gardens, an expansive Kitchen Garden host to over 1,000 different species, and Gaia – an aging weimaraner who first greeted me at the gate. I have spent the day gardening with Sebastien, sowing seeds and comparing species. I do not speak French and he does not speak English but we both speak garden, and with my French dictionary and hand signals we get along. With extreme gratitude this is my new home for the next month, and I could not be happier. Je me sens merveilleux!