potiron de paris

towards the end of summer all carefully cultivated and even the not-so-well-tended plots are yielding their bountiful harvests...
I am proud to present our firstborn french pumpkin..."Jaune gros de Paris" - all glowing buttery roundness in his full perfection...the promise of "très beau fruit rond, très côtelé, aplati, écorce brun orangé, chair jaune" on the seed package when I chose it at the marché aux fleurs on the Ile de la Cité has been fulfilled!
I could have left him in our jardin potager a little longer to grow larger but he had actually tried to run away and was found hanging precariously on the other side of the back wall [and in fact his brother has sneaked right through the other fence to live secretly in the neighbour's garden where he is getting quite enormous!] but we decided that this is a good size to perform certain culinary experiments on...
he sat happily on display to admiring human eyes for a few days on our dining table... and then it was time...
I reluctantly cut into him, quartered one half, scooped out all his seeds and stringy pulp and baked the pieces flesh up - [the other half I baked flesh down, draining off more pumpkin juice!] - and when the pieces had cooled, I spooned out the mushy yellow flesh, to be used in various recipes...
so far, my simple pumpkin crêpes have been quite delicious, especially with some confiture d'abricots!

lying-fallow

I once wrote about a statue beckoning from a building on this street whose name has always plucked away at my intumescent heart...
the contemplative and reclusive rue des Solitaires echoes a nostalgic no man's land, a romantic retrenchment, a sentimental seclusion...
[I returned recently to find my invincible statue still solitary but the building had been freshly repainted an odd green, not the soft celadon it had once faded so introspectively to...]
I walked on by and passing a barricaded lot, I peeked through a crack and find again a wasteland wilderness, a dejected desert - where a new structure has not yet sprouted up, where a community garden has not been measured out, where squatters have not gamely tented on... and where the inviolate red doors may still open up and lead towards the ever receding barren mysteries of les solitaires pauvres...

lilolila

crumpled-up silver net clouds loom over a rambling open post and beam walkway awkwardly hung with sheets of colour-splotched graffiti like so much drying laundry flapping in the breeze on this little island of green relief...
on a small corner lot on rue de Belleville, an experiment in democratic design within a neighbourhood garden has been implemented by L'association l'îlot-lilas...
based on the theories of artist/architect Yona Friedman, a very loose hanging "museum of graffiti" was installed as a participative project to encourage local residents to effect change in their own environment... redefining their public spaces as they see fit and evolving them according to their needs...
[or devolving into organizational chaos, as some might grumble...!]

[295, rue de Belleville]

stair-stockings

the entry courtyard of the17th century Hôtel de Sully is one I know well as I frequently trespass through to the parc of the Place des Vosges...
one day as I entered through the rue Saint-Antoine doors I was confronted by clunky barricades, spindly scaffolding, and metal stairs sexily clad in a giantess net stocking - all sullying the usually drowsy elegance of this domain overseen by no less than the Four Seasons and the Four Elements...

[designed by Jean Androuet du Cerceau and built between 1624 and 1630 for Mesme Gallet, the Hôtel de Sully was soon acquired by the duc de Sully, Minister of Finances to Henri IV... it is now the Centre des Monuments Nationaux to manage monuments and historic buildings belonging to the state... since 2004, it also houses the state's contemporary photo collection in the Jeu de Paume museum... as well as one of my favourite bookstores with a comprehensive collection of books on Paris...
Hôtel de Sully...62, rue Saint-Antoine]

chain-link-lace

the art of chain-link crochet made manifest by this example at Le 104 imbues plain-jane fencing with a sublime decorative value... transforming a mundane common-place necessity into giant lacy doilies to mysteriously veil the harsh urban landscape or certain neglected gardens...

[Le CentQuatre, 104, rue d'Aubervilliers et 5, rue Curial... I forgot to jot down the artist's name...]

monsieur le vitrier

monsieur le vitrier is from a time when there were no computers to google for a glass repairman or twitter the world to recommend one... he walks the streets with his sheets of glass securely strapped to his back and stops on every block to call out his services...
once we had him come up to repair a cracked windowpane in the stairwell - and we hope that there will be more broken windows to keep him coming back... but we know that one day he will be too weary to traverse the narrow streets of the Marais anymore, and potential glazier apprentices are now too busy texting with their nimble fingers...rather than getting them cut by broken glass!

[Place des Vosges]

monsieur le coq

a grizzly old cock appears in my peripheral vision as I bike along the quai Jemmapes discovering the location of the EXACOMPTA plant for supplying generations of writers and reluctant students with fine notebooks and sturdy paper goods...
he is not the proudest of rooster, what being overweight with a featherless paunch and his bits hanging out unobtrusively... there is a certain quirkiness about him though that sets him apart from some other animal depictions I have come across on parisian walls...
the loud-crowing symbol of the french state somewhat plucked and bloated but still holding his head up high [and with his manhood intact!]...

[thanks to Adam for letting me know the name of the artist - BONOM... there is a flickr photo pool of his work and Adam also wrote a piece a while ago on a church near the Bastille that featured an ammonite fossil by Bonom on the spire]

stick-it-to-me-ters

tiny stickers go on small surfaces to animate these otherwise banal meter boxes...
stickers attract more stickers and proportionately shrunken tags, and soon, voila, a self-contained site of colour and texture and self-expressionistic remains to brighten any meter-reader's day...

[Rue Vieille-du-Temple]

sign-aged

seriously...
is this an inverse invitation to stick them up anyways...
is this an ironic irritant to post some more...
or perhaps just another lovely old sign of a paris past...

[I think I will appropriate this next for my new header "signage"!]