The Pistachio

We live in a home that’s called La Pistache, which means the pistachio, and which led us to believe it might be green (or red) but it’s neither. I believe it’s named pistachio in honor of the local Provençal confection called nougat de montélimar, a chewy candy made with roasted pistachios and almonds. I’m not a big fan of this stuff, but I also didn’t get off on the right foot with it, so to speak.

Nougat de montélimar

On our first day in Aix, I went to the outdoor market and got suckered into sampling a piece — and letting my kids sample pieces — from a very assertive vender. I felt I should at least buy a little slice, so I indicated that I wanted une tranche petite, a small slice, and she handed back a modest chunk for 25 euros. It left a bitter taste (the price, that is — around $33), so although we kept it in our pantry for a few days, I never took another bite. And then we threw it out.

Back to La Pistache. If you search in google maps for “La Pistache, Chemin de Gravesonne, Aix-en-Provence,” you will find it labeled with a little red balloon. Actually, it’s possible that this only happens for me, since I’ve searched for it before and clicked on street view and so on. Could be an example of the so-called filter bubble.  Either way, you will find the correct location, and there ought to be a little window in the upper left showing street view and photos. The street view seems wrong — I think they were driving the google vehicle up someone else’s driveway — but the house photos are correct.

Google map of La Pistache

You can see on the map that La Pistache is at the top of a little squiggly line and surrounded by mostly empty green. This is very true. Getting to our house, as the Dodyks (Phebe’s parents) can now attest, is a minor adventure. The lane is narrow, hardly wider than our Renault Kangoo, which thankfully has mirrors that flip in against the side of the car whether pushed from the front or the back. It has several hairpin turns that come one after another with no straightaway and no pause, all while going up a steep, somewhat slippery, gravel road. One of these days we’ll encounter someone on their way down while we’re on our way up, and that will be an exciting moment. It sounds a bit beastly, and it sort of is, but it isn’t like you’re going to skid off a cliff or anything. The biggest risks are scraping the side of the vehicle on a branch or stalling out.Behind and all around the house are woods. It’s all very green right now, early October, with hardly any sign of leaves changing color, although many of the leaves will change color — or at least they’ll become brown and fall off. This area is Mediterranean, not tropical, and it will look wintry in December, or so I’ve been told. Phebe told me that (she visited last winter).

Wild boars, or sanglier. We’ve seen them with babies few times on walks or runs, although this photo is from the internet.

Despite all the woodsiness, the house doesn’t have a lot of property. All those woods are privately owned, and most property is fenced off (you have to walk up the road 20 minutes or so to get to the public green space). La Pistache is fenced off as well, although minimally and mainly to keep out the wild boars who might otherwise damage the landscaping. Our landlords instructed us to close our gate every night for this reason. We do as they ask, although I’ve noticed that we have a separate entrance, stairs that come up from the lane, and this stairway has no gate.

I should clarify that although the house doesn’t have a ton of property, it has enough. Being on a hill, the property is placed on a couple of terraces. On the lower terrace, there’s a gated, gravel parking area big enough for two or three cars. The upper terrace is where the house sits, surround by a simple but lovely garden (there’s plenty of rosemary), a patio for table and chairs for outdoor dining, and a smaller second patio with a smaller second table for two. It’s very charming and feels very Provençal.

Dmitri, looking out of his window — note the shutters!

The house itself is stucco and features the wooden shutters that are so typical of this part of France. And unlike shutters in America, these shutters get used every day. You open them in the morning, first thing, and you close them at night. This could be sort of tiresome, if looked at the wrong way, because you do need to open the window on a chilly morning and lean outside, carefully, in order to fasten the latches so that they won’t swing closed again. But there’s a right way to look at it, which I read about in one of our getting-to-know-Provence books. Every morning begins with a ritual of greeting the day, literally opening your house to the outside. It can’t be rushed. Every evening ends with a closing up of the hearth and home. It’s stopping to smell the flowers. It’s enjoying the little things — being conscious of the passing of time. You get the picture.

Inside, we have tile floors and a large single room that includes most of the first floor. There’s a dining table, which the kids also use for studying, a living-room area, and, around the corner, a small study. No doors, so it’s all very open and interconnected. There’s a separate room behind the office area which is closed off by a door, and contains the laundry, the water heater, and a small water closet.

The kitchen is on the other side of the house. It’s a galley style kitchen, separated from the open-room living space. It’s big enough for two or three people to be in there working, barely — better for two, or one; it’s not really a hang-out spot. There’s a refrigerator, small by American standards but perfectly adequate, a pantry, a sink, dishwasher, toaster, microwave — in short, it has all the amenities and functions well. There are also two windows which we often open, one of them looks straight up at the old Tour de Cesar, visible through a perfect window in the trees.

Upstairs, we have three bedrooms and two bathrooms, so ample space for the four of us. The boys have the more glorious bedrooms, glorious because of the big French windows with great views out to the south. On a warm day, windows open, a breeze comes in (bugs too, sometimes, because there aren’t any screens — but they tend to buzz out again), and it’s lovely. Phebe and I have a very pleasant room as well, it’s just not quite as airy and light-filled as the boys’. It has its own bathroom, though, and a bureau and some closet space, so: practical matters.

And I think that’s about it. There’s one other part of the exterior, near the back corner of the house, where we hang our laundry to dry; there’s a little alley behind the house where you can look over the fence at the neighbor’s property, which seems to be just woods; and there’s our neighbor’s house — actually, our landlords’. They let us use their swimming pool, which is great on warm days, although I suspect we’ll be wandering over there less and less as the season progresses.

Look for more pictures of our house coming soon — I’ll post them as soon as I take them!