Tomatoes

I have grown tomatoes before - though not very successfully - in pots. I think I just got bored with them.

So I thought I knew what I was letting myself in for when Eric and Phoebe offered us a few plants.  Two cherry, two "green" and one plum.

The border behind the pool house seemed like a good place - facing south, with a warm sheltering wall.  There were already a couple of hydrangeas in the border, but that didn't seem to be a problem as my recollection of growing tomatoes in the UK was that they didn't grow very big.  To begin with they didn't.  The weather was dry and hot and I fretted about their not getting enough water, so I rigged up hose pipes and tried to remember to water them most evenings.

Being behind the pool house, I can't see them from the house.  So although I know about pinching out the side shoots, I found it was easy to forget about them.  By the time I remembered and after several bouts of rain, I suddenly found that I had a tomato forest.  Not just side shoots, but side shoots of side shoots and all of them with flowers on, so it seemed a shame to pinch them out.

I am now buying canes by the dozen to support the heavy laden branches and I'm scouring the internet for recipes for tomato chutney and instructions on how to freeze them for winter. And somewhere behind the forest there are two hydrangea plants struggling to grow.

Mind you, it's so satisfying bringing in a bowlful of just-picked, I grew this myself, sun-filled fruit for supper.

Trip to Nîmes

We started well!  Vita had been sick over night (too many over-ripe figs?) and continued to throw up as we drove along the motorway heading for Toulouse.  As between "episodes" her tail was up and wagging, we decided to press on. After a couple of unscheduled stops she finally calmed down and curled up asleep and content on the back seat.

We've become real country bumpkins, used to our quiet lanes and empty villages. Our side of France, tourists have long gone, but in the hot, dry south of Provence the French, Americans, Italians, Germans, Scandinavians, English and Japanese are still in holiday mood and milling round the star attractions.

So we visited Aigues-Mortes, Arles, Avignon, Les Baux, the Roman aqueduct of Pont du Gard and Saintes Maries de La Mer in the Carmargue along with the world and his wife and his dog.  We ate exotic flavoured ice creams (lemon meringue pie the favourite), strolling with the throng window shopping, marvelling at the number of street cafes and restaurants (how could they all stay in business?) and trying to take in a bit of history and scenery along the way.  Next time we'll come "out of season" (if there is such a thing).

Our hotel, with its individual houses and three swimming pools nestling among oleander bushes, was our place of sanctuary and good food.

In the brisk wind, the swimming pools and the Med, were too cold to do more than dip toes into, despite the heat of the days.  We've become soft and spoilt with our own warm pool on "our" side of France.

Aigues-Mortes

Arles

Les Baux

Our Hotel outside Nîmes

Palace of the Popes - Avignon

Pont du Gard

Saintes Maires de La Mer

Street Scenes

Link:
Our hotel: L'Enclos des Lauriers Roses

Moonlight

The moon is just past full. In the silver light I walk down to the cottage to turn off the hose to the butternut squashes and a white bobtail gleams and vanishes as a rabbit dashes across the lawn in front of me.  An owl, hunting low, swoops below me - a glint of great wings and then gone.

Later, putting the rubbish out for tomorrow's collection, Vita and I walk up the chemin alongside Monsieur F's field to the ridge road. No torch is needed as the moonlit white chalk of the hardcore marks our way. The dry pale leaves of the maize rustle in the night wind appearing and disappearing as they catch the moonbeams.

Across the valley half way up the hill where someone is slowly clearing and restoring the land, the old unused polytunnel glows in the reflected light of the moon. In the dark, its gleaming long low shape looks like a distant train waiting at a station..

The cows in the field beyond the stream went earlier in the summer, but three are now back.  Their distant bells accompany us as we walk up the hill to the road.

Storm Cloud at Sunset

From the posts on the forums today, seems like half of South West France was watching this storm cloud yesterday evening.  It was like something out of a science fiction film, with constant lightning flashes within the cloud.

We had a few drops of rain from it and then it slowly passed north and east of us.  Today has been hot and sticky and more storms are promised for tonight and tomorrow.  Let's hope the next one passes overhead. We could do with a good downpour.

The End of August

The long-dead sad, black drooped-over heads of the sunflowers have all been harvested and the first of the maize fields up on the ridge behind us is now just stubble.

The sound of distant thunder is the noise of grain lorries along the ridge road, racing back empty from the co-operative to the fields for the next load.

Philippe - who hopped off his tractor to introduce himself a few weeks back, saying he was our "neighbour" and that his parents used to live in the house across Serge's field with the same lieu-dit name as ours and although he doesn't live in the house he still farms the surrounding land - is out in the warm sunshine ploughing.

Saturday evening we went to the last of DejaVu's rock gigs for this year at Le Mas d'Agenais, under the high tiled roof of the old town market place.  The local restaurateur had decided it was the end of the season and there were few tables out and no food being served, so we stood around in small huddles and shouted small talk at each other over the noise of the band. There was little dancing and several of us slipped away early.

Sunday morning Tod and Vita walked to the sounds of distant gunfire up in the woodland on the other side of the valley. The hunting season has almost started and catalogues drop into our letter box with pictures of fierce men in camouflage.

Although the days are warm, the early mornings start crisp and weeding the new flower bed at the back of the cottage first thing, I've been wearing a gilet over a long-sleeved T-shirt - to be shed later as the sun moves round and I wander back to the house, eating fresh-picked squidgy sweet smelling figs for breakfast on the way.

I try to prolong the flowers on the rose bushes by dead-heading, but the hips are forming fast and the ones I miss are turning bright red.

The butternut squash plants that Eric and Phoebe gave us are rampaging across the bank behind the cottage.  Planted late after we got back from Poland they've been slow to start producing, but the first of the crop is now a chubby figure of eight, turning yellow and with the promise of winter soups and roast veg.

We're hoping to hold on to summer a little longer.  We're off to Nîmes next week for a few days exploring and I may get to dip my toes in the Med while Tod and Vita sit in a café on the waterfront watching the world go by.

Links:
DejaVu rock band

Shooting Star

This is the time of year for the Perseid meteors.  Wikipedia tells me they are debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle and that they are so-called because the point they appear to come from lies in the Perseus constellation.

I had never heard of them in the UK.  But then with all the pollution and light-spill at night in South East England I doubt they would have been visible.

The first year we were here, we took the batmobile up to the ridge behind us and lay back with the roof open star-gazing.  It's all too easy to begin to imagine things in the velvet black with so many stars overhead.  Tiny, momentary pin pricks of light - are they actually meteors or just our eyes playing tricks?

This year has not been a good one for seeing them. The moon has been full through the peak viewing time and the sky has not been dark enough.  But the moon has been rising later and later and last night, walking back up from the cottage after watering the new "hot border", I needed the torch to see where I was going.

The Plough (one of the few constellations I recognise) hung huge and low in the northern sky, straight above our chemin rural. It looked as if I could walk right up to it.

And then I saw it!  A shooting star.  A long slow fall across the sky, in front of The Plough and over the roof of our house.  No doubt about it.

Maybe I should have made a wish, but I didn't need to. It had already been granted.

Links:
Wikipedia article on Perseids
Photo of this year's meteors from Mike Long taken in the Hautes Alpes - article here

Housework

I notice the dangly cobwebs under the chairs on the veranda and walk on, in the hope that someone else (in this two-person home of just him and me) will get the dustpan and brush and sweep them away.

Miramont - Bastid'art

High summer and festivities in full swing, Guccio's owner and I amble through Miramont on Saturday afternoon taking in acrobats, jugglers, street musicians, a luscious red fruit sorbet piled with cream and gossip with friends. The day ends with moules, frites and cheap rosé under a thunderous, rainbowed evening sky.

Links:
Batuc'fada - the samba band Miramont