So East it's Ouest

I technically live in the department of Lot-et-Garonne (the names of the two rivers) which is the old region called Aquitaine but I am right on the northern edge of...you guessed it Gascony.  Aquitaine has its own list of cool places and people; Eleanor of Aquitaine (cough she started chivalry), Bordeaux, lots of ducks, the town that was used as the basis for Beauty and the Beast but this is a post dedicated to the ancient wild beautiful region called Gascony. Who do you know from Gascony?  Uh I don't know a certain man called 'd'artagnan'.  Just kinda a big deal, not only because he is made fun of for being a gascon but also because try as he would he was very gascon.   Yes they speak with a cute twang, adding a -g- to the ends of words and yes they are friendly and different from other French from different regions.  Like the south east this region spoke a language called Occitan long before it spoke 'proper french' making it sound much like Catalan but not qu...

Italy is green, Provence is lavender, Basque Country is red, and Gascony is...woad.  This is my color of blue y'all.  Gorgeous.  I noticed right away a difference in he blue around here especially the shutters and when I found out that it was a natural dye it all made sense.  Cause I'm a natural girl in her own natural world. What is woad?  Woad is actually a plant that has yellow flowers but when it is made into a dye it turns blue.  They used to think that the women who dyed with woad were witches because they would dip fabric into a blue bath and when it was raised out of the water it would turn yellow, it was the invisible marker of its time.  The buildings around here have their own beauty, usually a sandy yellow or plaster white with bricks with white borders around the windows and woad blue shutters, they mix stone and brick.  Most buildings are old like small fortified cities old, remember how people call this the Tuscany of France?  ...