Dwelling amidst beautiful chaos…eventually.

To dwell is to garden, so said Martin Heiddeger.

One of the rather dubious charms of La Bu is the state of its garden. There were visions early on, as we began to look for somewhere in France we could make home, of finding a place that needed some work–both hearth and land. We are, after all, young(ish) and reasonably hale. The idea of putting our stamp on things (as realtors inevitably say while showing you a dark, moss covered staircase in a house that had its last good year about the time the Great Depression was wrapping up) was sort of appealing. In theory.

I am handy in the way that requires a high tolerance for failure, at almost every level. If it’s not the right tool (which is almost always the case–I once undertook the replacement of a bathroom sink with nothing more than a pair of needle-nosed pliers and a discarded brandy glass), its things like thermodynamics, or electron valence, or god help us all, math. I mean things usually get done, but its most certainly the journey rather than the destination that occupies my time (and the nightmares of those near and dear).

Madame is handy, if what’s being handled is—or at one time was—classified as flora. I mean, in a not-too-distant past she grew a jungle in the middle of a desert. Plants love her; and she loves plants. What she loves particularly and mostly is an apocalyptic landscape just begging for dreams, loves, and the ruthless, sap thirsty application of various cutting and digging instruments.

So, La Bu The House is, thank God, fine, ready to go, maybe needs a little work, but is completely livable. La Bu The Garden is what happens when 785 mm of rain falls on a patch of land—untended in any meaningful way for half-a-decade—surrounded by nothing but farmland, and populated by plants that strike horror in the hearts of gardeners everywhere: bamboo, hazelnut, laurel, bay, and brambles. La Bu The House emerges from this writhing mass of life as a stone buttress, albeit one unsuccessfully shedding grappling hooks of moss and ivy.

The garden is charming in a way that only Madame finds charming. I see where she’s going—covered in mud, scratches running across her upper arms, loppers clacking along, gripped in leather gloves built for hauling hot iron from bellowing forges, seeds and desiccated raspberries in her hair, and a maniacal smile matched only by the shinning glee in her eyes—but the process looks horrifying, and dubious, to me.

On the plus side, ten trees ranging from 15 to 40 feet high have come down. That means lots of lots of firewood. That, dear reader, is something I can do. But first, I need to build a wood store. And I’ve got NO idea where to find the pliers.