Budburst in Champagne

Here is a quick sketch I did of the champagne vines, they are just starting to put out their leaves and you could still clearly see the old twisted trunks.  The contract between the bright green of the new leaves and the grey, old trunks was lovely.

The vines here are much shorter than Australia, they would not have been more than 3-4 feet tall while ours are around 5 feet.  I think that these grapes when they grow up will become Moet-Chandon Champagne, such a fine future they have in front of them.  Years of resting and cosseting in the caves and then being sent off all around the world for people to drink in celebration of their life special moments.  I bought a bottle of vintage champagne from the Champagne house where we stayed to drink later in the year for my special moment, my 50th birthday.

I also managed to buy a couple of pens at my favourite Paris art shop, and one of them was a Japanese ink pen.  It has a brush on either end, one black and the other grey.  It is very lovely to draw with and I was happy with the lines it made.  I wish I could tell you the name of it, but it is all in Japanese.

Karen