June 3: Gaining Perspective

Gaining Perspective

June 3, 2008

Patrick Vander Bee

OH MY GOODNESS, another chateau! VILLANDRY?? NO WAY!!! Today we visited Villandry, and as there was not much chateau-ing there was no lack of gardening.

There are four gardens at Villandry, the ornamental gardens, the water garden, the herb garden and the kitchen garden. Yes, the kitchen gets its own garden. Here we experienced how the people of the Renaissance displayed their skills of creating perspective* with plants.

*per·spec·tive <http://cache.lexico.com/dictionary/graphics/luna/thinsp.png> [per-spek-tiv]
-noun
1. a technique of depicting volumes and spatial relationships on a flat surface. Compare aerial perspective <http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=aerial perspective>, linear perspective <http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=linear perspective>.
2. a picture employing this technique, esp. one in which it is prominent: an architect's perspective of a house.
3. a visible scene, esp. one extending to a distance; vista: a perspective on the main axis of an estate.
4. the state of existing in space before the eye: The elevations look all right, but the building's composition is a failure in perspective.

The ornamental gardens were a collection of four gardens that were composed of geometric patterns that were cute shapes like hearts or the ever popular triangles and squares. The water garden had water, the herb garden was really long and the kitchen gardens were very pretty but didn’t seem to have any connection with kitchens.

Afterwards we were herded back and funneled back onto the buses to eat lunch at school. As always in France the food was great. Upon leaving, people kindly exchanged a few water balloons with the wily seniors.

Three hours later we trickled into the doors of a professional kitchen at a cooking school. After being split into groups, each designated to make a different part of the meal, I found myself standing in front of a stainless steel counter where there were fresh vegetables and fowl awaiting. The chef explained to us in Frenglish that we were to chop and boil the veggies, sauté the chicken in honey, bake it, and then wrap it in cellophane. Once our creations had been finished we all sat outside in the dining room where people discussed how they thought they made the dish incorrectly. After awaiting our Russian roulette of food, the chefs called in the groups to serve the dishes at the appropriate time. The first dish was a soup consisting of shrimp and goat cheese, next was the chickenesque fowl baked with assorted veggies, all to be finished off by French toast with pineapple (sprinkled with coconut) and sherbet. All of it was great. At 9:30 local time we all shuffled to the cars of our host families full and tired, all in all having had a great day.