An early summer full of variety–the herbalists return, a poet ardéchoise, Armenian musicians, an American dancer, landscape designers, a sound sculptor and a creator of felt wall hangings…and not far away, the new Water Tower of Gilles Clément (photo Bernard Maingard). Strange weather with extremes of heat and cold, but regular rain, so we were not stressed as in so many other places. Jean-Marc managed to fill the house cistern with water from the springs below, but we are still making do with temporary measures (watering only the vegetables and recently planted shrubs). This has also been the summer of the boxwood blight, the “pyrale” moth. They have been around for years but this year the swarms were so dense that they stopped traffic not far from here. Three generations this summer: the first one seemed to kill ever boxwood in sight overnight. A second of much smaller moths left many caterpillars which we hope have starved. Treatments with water pressure and BT. Bits of green visible…time will tell. Portrait of a pyrale: 
EARLY SUMMER VISITORS
Residents:
The herbalists Thierry Thevenin et Cedric Perraudeau http://www.herbesdevie.com/herbesdevie/web/stages.html
Ginette Mathieu poet, who left us her volume La Chaloupe about life in the Ardèche for human and other species. Ginette and her husband Rémi Durand-Gasselin are founding members of the art trail, the Sentier des Lauzes http://surlesentierdeslauzes.fr/ 40 minutes from here (chapter in my book Mediterranean Landscape Design). .
Maureen Small, MD and dancer, founder on the NIA style in this part of France, www.nianow.fr/ 
Maureen is now a practising MD in Santa Fe.
For just one night, three musicians members of the Choir Canticum Novum Ararat : dialogue France-Arménie in the context of a concert at the Château de Chambonas, organised by the summer music festival of Labeaume en musique: http://www.labeaume-festival.org/
Spyros Halaris from Athens, plays the Kanun or “tabletop cithara”; Varinak Davidian tenor at the Lyons Operatta Theatre (also former sargeant in the Red Army…) and Agop Boyadjian, who plays the “duduk” (Armenian oboe) born in Lyons, all three professional musicians now living in France.
Just Passing Through
Francis Rousseau blogeur, who proposes these original collections https://wanderingvertexes.blogspot.fr/
https://astilllifecollection.blogspot.fr/
An evening of artists with Anouck Durand-Gasselin, Www.anouck-durand-gasselin.fr who showed all summer at the well-known www.galeriemirabilia.fr Along with two current residents at the art refuge of the Sentier des Lauzes, Anna Prugne and Gil Savoy, landscape architect and sound sculptor, working jointly on the portrait of a river on paper and in sound.
Two visitors prospecting for later workshops at Rousselonge: François Méchali, famous jazzman and Esther Spielmann, a Dutch artist working in felt http://www.estherspielmann.com.
Local visits to interesting places:
The Jardin des Sambucs near Le Vigan, (old friends, see last January in this blog, also in several of my books). I went there with Marie Lepoitevin abd Agnès Rouvier http://jardinsambucs.com
Also the Domaine du Taillé, designer-gardener Xavier Ott, http://www.domainedutaille.com/ our guide was Annick Carle-Roux who has a lovely BnB with a fine garden at the Mas de Saribou 07200 Vesseaux www.masdesaribou.fr
But above all, a first visit to the new Art Trail of the Parc Naturel des Monts d’Ardèche along the watershed line separating the Atlantic from the Mediterranean: www.lepartagedeseaux.fr I mostly saw this time Gilles Clément’s Water Tower, constructed mainlyby l’ELIPS, the same who laid my paving here at Rousselonge (see October 2016 and March 2017).
Bernard Maingard project director with L’ELIPS and all prove how solid it all it. Below a photo after completion by Nelly Aye, taken in August 2017. The heart of the tower is full of water? condensation? recuperation? This tower is much more than a beautiful sculpture, it is also and experiement in techniques of saving water.
