IT'S SPRING IN FRANCE 2026: SOME NEW STUFF AND SOME RECYCLED

It's been a somewhat grayer than usual, very much wetter than usual winter. Yes, the winters here can be cloudy and damp, and maybe our advancing age makes us anticipate the blue skies and warmth of spring with greater urgency, but I do believe that this winter colored outside the lines.

Our dreary winter has led to an interesting run up to summer. The leaves of the vines present every shade of green imaginable to the eye. Some of us, with no particular experience in such things, gravely discuss what that might mean for the fall harvest. Every once in a while, we question local elders. Unfortunately, the answers are often contradictory. Particularly impressive, at least to me, were the Judas Trees this year. Red bud trees to Americans. And the roses have been popping early with abundant blooms.

Days dawn crisp and chill but warm up quickly, though a refreshing breeze may linger. The sky turns a color that the word blue doesn't do justice to. The still snow-capped Pyrenees, 100 kilometers or so away, line up along a good portion of the distant skyline. As those who know me well are sick of hearing me say,"The light seems to radiate up from the landscape rather than reflecting off of it. The Impressionists painted here for a reason." Well, they painted close to our little village of Quarante. And their painting reflects the light that we love to be able to witness.

But it's not all puppy dogs and ice cream cones.

Persistent wet weather means standing water means mosquitos - mozzies to our English friends. And the warmth brings out ants and flies and snails and all manner of buzzing, crawling, and/or biting things that go dormant in the winter. Also dormant in the winter are the swarms of bicyclists who appear on our narrow, two-lane blacktops in their full spandex regalia as soon as the weather warms. They are ubiquitous, sometimes alone, sometimes in impressive packs. They are entitled to a full lane, though most do move to the side. Still, finding a proper place to pass on our winding, hilly roads can be a challenge. Also challenging can be the sight of all of that spandex heading into the local watering hole for a quick break. And while we are on the subject of the local roads, spring also means that the tractors of the vignerons have fired up and that the camper vans of the French equivalent of snow birds have migrated to our corner of the south of France. 

I hesitate to mention the camper vans as a problem. I did so in a blog post some years ago and was angrily confronted by a van driver who took umbrage. But just the other day, on our way to a Sunday morning market, we found ourselves behind a new, particularly wide rig whose driver seemed to consider the white lines on the road as a suggestion rather than a demarcation. 

Parking! 

It's hard to believe that parking emerged as an upfront issue in the recent mayoral election of a village of 1,800 or so souls. But when everybody's home, and when the second homes fill up as the weather cooperates, your regular parking space may disappear. You may have to cruise Quarante a time or two to spot an empty space within a reasonable walking distance from home. So in the years that we've lived here, several underutilized spaces have become lots, some paved and lined, some a bit less manicured but OK spaces.

Anyone discussing life in the south of France is obliged to comment on the food, French cuisine, in our case Mediterranean French cuisine, a world classic. Cook what's in season and fresh, Respect the ingredients. 

 You know that summer is on the horizon when the Spanish tomatoes are being practically given away in the stores. They are a particular shade of red. The shade is called RED! In the veggie markets, the fragrance of the strawberries is an almost physical presence. The asparagus is about done, but not quite. And North Africa is just a ferry ride away. 

We particularly appreciate that the stores are obliged to post the origin of the produce that they sell. You can buy fruit shipped from South America or you can wait for the local crop. Either way, you know what you are getting.

And of course, no one appreciates springtime more than our cats, our indoor cats, who are finally comfortable on the terrace. Well, maybe the purveyors of bedding plants are equally appreciative. But container gardening in a relatively small space with limited direct sun forms the basis for another post at another time.

FRESH FLOWERS, FREE SPEECH, A PISSED OFF CAT, AND OTHER BITS AND BOBS: #12

 

FRESH FLOWERS 

Joni always gets it right. You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

For something like 30 years and a bit more, we bought, packaged for resale, and distributed thousands of cut flowers every week. Roses, carnations, mums, and more slipped through our hands, primarily viewed as a commodity. It was how we made our living. Oh, every once in a while, a particularly fine specimen would catch our eye and wind up in a bud vase on the kitchen table. But in general, I just became accustomed to having fresh flowers in the house without really noticing them. 

In retirement, Cathey has taken to container gardening on the terrace. No veggies. Just stuff that looks pretty, smells good, or might spice up a stew. So we have sprigs and blossoms of several different sorts on the table as summer begins on through the middle of autumn. But the winters, as far from eastern Pennsylvania as we are, still can be pretty sparse. And, because I am a man, I hadn’t noticed that the vases had been put away and that the table was bare. 

The bulb lit in the dim recesses of what passes as my mind when a dinner invitée brought Cathey a bouquet of flowers instead of the usual bottle of wine.

“I just love cut flowers,” Cathey said. After more than 50 years, you may be as stupid about some things as a lump of granite, but if you are still alive and have all of your fingers and toes intact, you know when the lady of the house speaks from the heart.

Yes. I have started buying flowers. No big deal. Self defense is a noble and essential animal skill that human males would be wise to keep sharply honed.

FREE SPEECH

There’s lots of talk these days about freedoms. In particular, folks seem to be adopting the philosophy that rights are more important than responsibilities and can be disconnected from truth and from consequences. 

Joni again. She’s joined Neil Young in taking her music off Spotify in response to that service providing a platform for misinformation. Does Joe Rogan have a right to spout his bull shite? Of course he does. Does Spotify have the right to give him a platform? Certainly, although one could wish that Spotify would pay greater attention to the quality of the information its platform provides a megaphone for rather than the profitability of same. So what’s all the huffing and puffing about?

We need to have a serious conversation about how far we are willing to go to participate in the post truth society that we seem to be enveloped in. Most of us haven’t the power to influence the course of that conversation on a macro level. Joni and Neil can. But we have to do our part. We have to, with love and all due respect, push against falsehoods promoted in our hearing. Bypass the channels on the television or radio that promote false narratives for profit. Don’t give voice to family and friends spouting anti scientific nonsense, particularly in front of our children.

The freedom to swing your fist ends at the point of my nose. Should the two collide, there will be consequences. And in these troubled times, the freedom of people like Rogan to give credence to opinions that might cause serious harm to me or those that I love should not be allowed to be monetized without significant push back from serious and thoughtful people wherever it rears it’s ugly head.

OUR CAT IS PISSED OFF

We're in the middle of a move. We're only moving about 75 yards down the street, but we are moving. Beds, rugs, spice cabinets, plants, all that had been here will soon be there. Because we're only moving down the street, we are doing most of the moving by ourselves. We pack a box, we carry it down the hill, we unpack the box, we bring back the empty box. Repeat. It's been a couple of weeks now, but we are near the end.

Sylvie is having a hard time. She’s a snowshoe, an offshoot Siamese breed. And she was a street kitten, feral child of a feral mother, very territorial and always aware of her surroundings. So when stuff that Sylvie had become accustomed to began disappearing, Sylvie noticed. She began following us around. She became more of a lap cat. Something unusual was going on and she was not comfortable with it.

The crisis came when I began to tear down the room that she and I share. It’s my office, but it’s the one room in the house that has the radiator going all winter so that she has one dependable warm place to nap on her cat tower. As the date for the move neared, I spent a day clearing everything out of the room except my desk and that tower. Day bed, book cases, coats and hangers in the little open closet…all suddenly gone. 

Sylvie immediately displayed her displeasure. She threw up everywhere. Everywhere. She stopped eating, even her favorite daily treats. She hid inside the little cave in the tower that she had never frequented before. Sylvie was one pissed off cat.

Two days passed. We kept close watch. We considered a trip to the vet if she continued to refuse to eat. But in time, Sylvie came around. Slowly at first, but now back to whatever passes as normal for her. Now comes the kicker. We move her to the new house in a couple of days. I will report.

BITS AND BOBS

A friend in Florida is complaining that it’s so cold that he might have to put on socks. Meanwhile, they’re experiencing a blizzard where he grew up in the north. Opinions about the weather are indeed relative to the thickness of one’s blood and, in warmer climates, the blood thins rapidly.

A teenage girl just became the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe in a single-seat prop plane, solo. It took the better part of six months to complete the journey, proving that given enough time and money, anybody can do anything.

Apropos of our move, the new house is heated primarily by programmable electric radiators. I intend to fire up the fireplace insert frequently for two reasons. First, a fireplace not only provides heat, but visual and auditory and aromatic enjoyment as well. Secondly, we don’t have a ten year old child handy to teach me how to program the darn radiators which, by the way, come in a variety of different flavors with different buttons and little, unreadable screens.

FRIDAY FLOWER MARKET, BEZIERS - APRIL 2015