La Buissiere

Laurent and I sold our house on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in September of 2019, put our belongings in storage, and flew to France in October. His parents graciously welcomed us at their country home a couple hours north of Paris. It was comforting to land at a familiar place with the in-laws, but it wasn’t home. We immediately started to look for the next house. Although we had wanted to live near Tours in the Loire Valley, properties were way too expensive there, so we looked further south at a half dozen houses in our price range. We knew right away that the last one near Bourges – La Buissiere (Boxwood) – would be our new home. Our rather cheeky offer was accepted, we closed at the end of December, and our furniture arrived from the States the second week in January of 2020. The timing was fortuitous because we were settled in by the time the pandemic shut the world down.

La Buissiere is a century-old manor designed by a renowned architect and built by the wealthy editor of an anticlerical magazine for his mistress Georgette, a local girl. The house was known at first as La Villa Georgette, but the name of the property was changed by subsequent owners because of the sordid backstory of the original occupants: Victor and Georgette were the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell of their day, convicted of child trafficking and sentenced to prison. (I’ll tell their unpleasant Zola-esque story another day.)

In spite of the less than exemplary early residents at La Buissiere, its subsequent owners lived there traditionally and happily, especially the ones before us – the family of a diplomat who lovingly restored and improved the house and gardens – over many years and at great expense. In addition to the master bedroom, each of the four children had his or her own bedroom, with an extra bedroom for guests – serviced by three full bathrooms and a powder room. Under the diplomat’s direction, the house and gardens of La Buissiere were magnificently maintained. The children gave us his file folders of obsessively documented expenditures, with estimates and invoices for all major projects -- plumbers, electricians, roofers, contractors, woodworkers, masons, and landscape architects. He also wrote detailed month-by-month instructions on how to maintain the gardens, probably hoping that his children would eventually take over the care of the property. At the time of his death, his children were grown with homes of their own; his widow couldn’t maintain the property by herself and eventually moved to Paris. The family gathered from time to time at the house for vacations, but for the most part the house was not lived in for many years, and it showed: such a property cannot be maintained at a distance, and it was obvious the house and gardens had not been cared for properly. When we first visited the house, the owners were ready to sell, and we were prepared to buy. We made an offer on the spot, which was accepted a couple of days later after all the family members conferred.

We knew the house and gardens needed a lot of work, but we didn’t care. We have restored old houses for almost 30 years. Our properties have always chosen us as much as we have chosen them. We have always seen prospective houses not as they actually are but as they could be after we have worked our magic. We have looked for their beauty and not at their flaws. One could say we have had love affairs with all our houses, and by the time we have left them they have looked just as good if not better than we first envisioned them. There is always some regret when we sell a house and have to say goodbye to an old friend. We know it will be the same when we leave La Buissiere.

We have been at La Buissiere for over a year and a half. In our early weeks, while we unpacked our boxes, we jumped through the administrative hoops of moving to a new country: getting French medical insurance, cell phones, electricity and internet service, and registering me with the immigration service and getting my carte de sejour (residence card). Of course, all of this was made easier because Laurent is French, we were married in France, and we lived here for our first 18 years. And of course, all was made more difficult because of Covid, as businesses and government offices shut down and we couldn’t even leave town.

In this horrific time of pandemic lockdowns, we are grateful to have been kept busy renovating the house and restoring the gardens. We’ve had to engage outside professionals for some of the big jobs: remodeling the kitchen, electricity upgrades, installation of two new toilets and a shower, repair of a fallen section of the stone wall which surrounds the property, and removal of many dead trees and bushes. The rest we have done ourselves. Last winter Laurent repaired and painted all the walls and ceilings downstairs while I restored the floors and woodwork and mended and cleaned fourteen 12-foot-long drapery panels. Weather permitting, we work outside. Laurent has removed miles of ivy choking the trees, replaced the well’s broken pump and repaired the irrigation system, and created a potager (vegetable garden). I have pruned away mountains of dead wood and overgrowth, and I endlessly weed the flower beds and borders. The problem with all the work is that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is increasingly weak. As aging French gardeners say, “La terre est basse.” (“The ground is low.”) At 70 and counting, I can do only a fraction of the physical work I did 15 years ago, when we restored Les Vignes (Grapevines), our turn-of-the-century residence in Normandy where we ran a B&B in the house and a gite in the caretaker’s cottage. Laurent is 10 years younger than I, but he’s beginning to feel the pinch of time as well. We know we can’t take care of this property in ten years, and we wonder if we’ll even make it to five. On verra. (We’ll see.)

The slate roof of La Buissiere is beautifully designed and impressively big. It’s also very old and needs to be replaced. We can’t afford to replace the whole roof but have engaged a local roofer with a long-standing reputation to replace the back half. The work was supposed to start in mid-June, but due to delays caused by the relentless rains in western Europe this spring, the work has been delayed until mid-September. We have been assured that by the 15th of September the scaffolding of the back of the house will start. We hope so: the new roof should be in place before the winter winds and rain arrive. But this is France, and I have learned not to rely on the promises of contractors here. On verra.

We have survived our first year and a half at beautiful but demanding La Buissiere. We are at times weary, but we are never bored – and not yet broken.