Social Butterfly

This weekend gives new meaning to the term social butterfly.

It started Friday night with my annual dinner with my pal Barbara where I prepare New England style apple pie and corn chowder.

The pie crust is made with Crisco bought and brought from the American store in Geneva and costing slightly less than a semester at Harvard. Traditionally I decorate it with a bird cut from the pastry with a cookie cutter that my grandmother and great grandmother used and set the piece on a tree branch cut into the crust.

Saturday lunch was at La Noisette with Gertrude and Barbara as we caught up on news. She told us of her award ceremony for her efforts in producing HIV awareness films, her dog, etc. and we planned other events for the month they will be here. Gertrude and Froed are in the house Barbara and I used to own. Of course during lunch, different people came by warranting catch-up conversations including a native who now lives in Pontalier (a place I fell in love with not far from where I used to live when I was first in Switzerland) and has so much history of the region in his head, that talking and walking with him is like being in a documentary.

Then at night, a different group of us, locals and Brits, went to the butterfly farm where Marielle, a native Argelèsian, who we meet for coffee at La Noisette, is cooking.

Before dinner we wandered through the enclosure alive with plants and flowers between ponds. Butterflies flew around us. They were every size and colour imaginable including several that were bigger than both my hands. The most beautiful were a perfect match for my blue folders, but were impossible to catch on camera. As soon as they lit they closed their wings. Their underside is a dark chocolate. I did find a photo on the web http://flickr.com/photos/jkleber/357822825/ done by a photographer with more luck or maybe patience than I have.

Dinner was in the garden, un menu unique de seche, giant calamar, done Catalan style. The sinking feeling of preparing to chew and chew and chew on flavourless rubber disappeared with the first bite which was tender and delicious. I should have had more faith in Marielle

And today I am off to the beach with Nadine, owner of La Petite Pause. Since it is the end of the season she is beginning her autumn hours.

Friends are due down from Geneva although not staying with me, Dinners are planned, more Danes are arriving at the end of the week, no longer content with just their summer stay.

My daughter laughs when I tell her that once I was worried that I would be isolated down here. Instead, I have found a variety of acquaintances in the Catalan, French and international communities.

And although there are days I lock myself to my computer to write either my fiction or my news articles, I know just outside my door are interesting people to talk to, eat with and share new experiences that leaves me all a flutter.