FRENCH WORD-A-DAY

"Vauclusian sky" by Jean-Marc

buissonnière (bwee-sohn-yehr) adjective
   : living in bushes

When a French student skips class, s/he goes and "lives in the bushes" for a day... We call this "ditching"; here in France it is called "l'école buissonnière" (literally "bush school"). Borrowing the bush term, and backtracking to my Arizona childhood, we hooksters (hooky players?) might've called ourselves "Creosote Class Cutters"* or "The Desert Scrub Club"....

*creosote bush: desert shrub of southwestern United States and New Mexico having persistent resinous aromatic foliage and small yellow flowers (definition from onelook.com)
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by Kristin Espinasse

         (...faire l'école buissonnière = to play hooky...)

After allowing my daughter a ditch day yesterday (French teachers are on strike...does this count?), I thought "why not take one yourself"? So this morning I lingered a bit over breakfast, putting an extra heaping of strawberry jam over yesterday's stale cinnamon toast and having a second cup of coffee
while letting thoughts percolate. That's when--bingo!--it occurred to me that I might continue in this lazy mode... if only it weren't for the work load! How can one take a day off when one has a column to write?

Steal, of course.

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(The following post was "lifted," along with my work load, from my husband's wine blog. I hope you'll enjoy his updates about our wine adventure. You'll also learn the outcome of that Wine Label Poll we had last month. For now, I wish you bonne lecture*!)
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Jean-Marc writes...
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Dear wine lovers,
All our tanks have now finished both their fermentations (alcoholic and malolactic). The four filled tanks we have express their "terroir" identity with, of course, the grape variety's influence. What is interesting here is that depending on "terroir" and with the same grape variety, the wines express
themselves very differently....

(To read the rest of this post (and to view Jean-Marc's tasting video!) click here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~French Vocabulary~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
bonne lecture = enjoy (the reading)
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:: Audio File ::

Listen to my son, Max, pronounce today's word and expression

(this feature is now available at the blog under :: Audio File ::)
Download buissonniere.mp3
Download buissonniere.wav

Gift shop:
Provence 2008 Calendar
Cavallini Paris France, French themed assorted stamps in tin with notepad
"La France" Magnetic Puzzle -- learning tool includes the French regions and French departments with their specialties
In French Music: Pop à Paris - More Rock n' Roll and Mini Skirts