The Autumn Leaves Outside My Window…by Adela Meadows

The New England Tourist Board has done an outstanding job and, consequently, the east coast of the United States gets most of the press when it comes to “Fall Colors”…but the riot of colors that come with autumn can actually be found in other parts of the world as well…including mon quartier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The banks of the Seine continue to be an ideal place for contemplation…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…or making that phone call while out on a stroll with the dog.

But, where just a few weeks prior, the quays were filled with sunbathers catching rays…


…now the surroundings are ablaze with color…
  
…look closely, there is a window in amongst those bright red leaves…

…that crawl upon the magnificent seventeenth century building that houses the Tribunal Administratif de Paris…
 
…the courthouse where complaints against government bureaucracy are heard. Of course, surrounded by such beauty, it’s difficult to complain…perhaps that was their plan in the first place!

We’re part of an international group of hikers who at least once a month pack a lunch and board a train heading out of town…only to hop off and make our way back to Paris…some twenty to thirty kilometers of interesting conversation amidst the beautiful and historical countryside.
Our October outing provided us with a hint of the colors to come…
…they weren’t quite at their peak yet…but a lovely sight all the same.

Now, with November, the leaves are really falling, but here that doesn’t mean piles of leaves to jump in and play…or worse yet, burn. The French have been experts at recycling for centuries…
…and millions and millions of autumn leaves are carefully gathered to use as wrapping for certain varieties of cheese.

More than just a traditional means of packaging…for some cheeses, autumn leaves are instrumental to the development of the distinct flavor of the product. The leaf-wrapped round of cheese shown to the left is from the region known as the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence…made primarily of goat’s milk, the tannins found in chestnut leaves are a secret to its success. A success of long-standing, as it was reportedly a favorite cheese of Antonius Pius, a Roman emperor in the second century A.D. He found it so tasty, that legend purports that his death was the result of an eating binge…specifically the over-consumption of this particular type of cheese. Of course, the fact that this type of cheese is soaked for weeks in brandy may have been a contributing factor!

Prior to being used to wrap cheese, these chestnut leaves found time to adorn an intricately-formed Porquier-Beau piece…part of the botanique series from the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The series was based on the designs of Alfred Beau.

For the most part, Brittany is not a hot-bed of autumn colors…the heather turns to a ghastly brown and many of the species of ajonc are evergreen. So the leaves on Quimper pottery seldom reflect the colors of the fall season.

Another piece from the same series…a plate full of begonia leaves. The begonia is not a native shrub of Brittany, but its French roots may have led to its inclusion.

The plant was given its name by a seventeenth century French botanist, Charles Prumier, who chose to honor Michel Bégon, an early Governor of Haiti who was an ardent plant collector.

This botanique plate does come rather close to fall colors…
…Beau identified the design only as feuilles pointues…meaning pointed leaves.

 

 

 

 

 

The town of Malicorne in the Sarthe is, however, no stranger to the effects that occur when Mère Nature decides it’s time to rest for the winter and curtails the photosynthesis process…as attested to by these autumn leaves…


 
…which are actually Malicorne faïence knife rests!