Cormatin again

Cormatin Chateau as seen from the Kitchen Garden

All on the same rose bush!

We arrived at Anne's for dinner at 7:30 Tuesday evening. Anne had made the best sweet and sour chicken! We chatted away and I didn't notice the time until a little before 2 AM. Margery is used to being in bed by 9:30. Needless to say, once Margery got to bed she didn't emerge until the following afternoon.

Knowing that the chateau at Cormatin would close for lunch until 2 PM, I also knew we still had plenty of time to visit there.

I had been there a month ago with Carol so I didn't expect to take many pictures, but the kitchen garden had been transformed as all the crops were now up and producing. In May I only got pictures of the handmade supports. Now I could barely see the supports through the green bean plants.

The building in this picture is really just a gorgeous barn...

For anyone who wants more information, go to my earlier post on the Cormatin Chateau. This time around it'll be mostly pictures I didn't take last time...

The picture above was taken in the formal garden area. In the background between the squared off hedge and the one with the rolling top there is a grass walkway. Short hedges solve the problem of keeping the edges of flower beds looking neat.

On the right is the chateau as seen from the top of the aviary. Margery and I figured out how to get in and out of the maze by looking down at it. If we'd tried it from the ground we'd probably have had to be rescued.

The lady sounded British when she overheard me speaking and  proclaimed that there were no blue herons in France. According to her, this was a gray heron.

If you check this out, let me know what you learn. When I was with Elisabeth, I spoke about seeing a blue heron and she didn't correct me...

I now know that hummingbirds don't exist in France, but is the same thing true of the blue heron?

 That's our guide explaining in French why the architecture of this staircase is so important.

Some walls are so ornate I wouldn't want to spend much time in the room. This is the antechamber...where you keep unimportant people waiting rather than let them into the bedroom where you'd be enjoying the guests you wanted to see. The bedroom was the proper place for meeting and entertaining.



If it wasn't winter, this is what you would see out the antechamber window. That's the moat reflecting the clouds in the sky.

All the thousands of studs on this chest were to protect it's leather surface when it would be used for carrying household items via carriage from one of the family's estates to another.

After our visit we hurried home and then on to have dinner in Sologny with Francis and Marie-Annick.