There is a wonderful warm feeling arriving back in Provence and a jolt that reminds me how much I miss France’s countryside. The warmth is rooted in a timelessness evidenced in the routines of daily life..the marketplace, the string bag with groceries, the cobbled hill streets, the strong and substantial older folks who seem so independent, so self sufficient. The traiteur, the flower stalls, the vegetables heaped high looking like no other vegetables in the world. It is a world that endures, fashionable or not, and it is heavenly.