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When people hear we have a house in France, they usually ask the same set of questions. Where? (We tell them “the Dordogne,” but that draws a blank.) Who takes care of it when you’re gone? (No one, really. We close it down when we leave.) Do you rent it out? (No, that would involve more trouble than it would be worth). And: What do you do there? How do you spend your days? At seven in the morning, when the church bells chime, Michael usually turns over and burrows under his pillow , but I slip out for an early walk. At that hour the air is cool; fog wells up from the valley and mists the castle in a veil of white spume. Though Mme. Boucher is out in her garden, most of the village is still dozing. During the two hours that I’m gone walking, the sun 5 d o r d o g n e d a y s warms the valley behind the castle’s east wall, edges over the top of the round artillery tower, and begins to heat the tile roofs of the town. I’m back by nine with fresh bread and croissants, which I pop into the oven for a few minutes to make the buttery crusts even more flaky. Michael, wakened by my entry through the noisy front door, winds down the stairs. He sets about preparing his filter-drip coffee and its pot of steaming milk, while I fix a pot of Fauchon vanilla tea for myself. To go with the croissants there is locally made raspberry and strawberry jam and Mme. Daniel’s sweet walnut paste, confiture de noix, which we consume in shameful amounts. Our kitchen window looks out on a cheerful stone wall with a patch of flowers in front, taking the morning sun. During breakfast we like to listen to the news in English on the BBC, using our shortwave radio, which sits next to the coffee grinder on a small oak night table with a black marble top that must have been part of someone’s bedroom set a hundred years ago. The time to get things done is after breakfast, before the heat of the day builds up. Afternoons in the Dordogne can be hot. We usually bring work with us from Madison—writing projects, books to read for the preparation of new courses, correspondence, and the like— whatever can be accomplished without benefit of a library . In the mornings we work at our tiny desks, a pair of small walnut tables that we spied at an outdoor antique fair. Michael’s is in the corner of the séjour next to the fireplace; mine sits beside the doorway to the terrace , which offers me a view of the dry stone wall that separates our property from the terraced grounds of the castle. There is something soothing about a hand-built 1 0 6 d o r d og n e day s wall where the placement of each stone has involved a human choice, and I never tire looking at it. In the Dordogne, you own the wall that separates your land from the property below you; you do not own the wall that separates you from the property above. That means that the castle owns the wall I look at from my desk. One year when the wall collapsed, it was the castle ’s responsibility to reconstruct it, even though all the stone fell onto our terrace. We in turn are responsible for the steep retaining wall that keeps our terrace from tumbling down onto the footpath below us. Over the years it developed an alarming bulge, but we had a mason point the stones with chaux (lime mortar), since nothing but earth was holding them, and so far the wall has held, bulge and all. Its solidity encouraged us to plant a large hibiscus bush in front of it. This “Rose of Sharon” (the French don’t use that nickname, preferring “ee-beeskoos ”) has grown to an impressive height and produces masses of white blossoms each July. Except for the couch, the room we work in is furnished with nineteenth-century rustic antiques. We spent the better part of our second summer scouting furniture at antique shops and outdoor fairs before settling on the pieces for our small rooms. Those antiquing jaunts gave us both a purpose and an excuse to visit towns and villages that weren’t on...

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