Moving into the Last Rounds of Planting

One of four crates of tomato plants waiting to be planted.

The garden: it’s all I seem to write about lately, but it really is somewhere where we spend a lot of time.  I planted the potimarron and butternut squash last week and we are moving into the final rounds of planting for the summer.  So far, spring has been pretty cool and that delayed earlier planting, but the tomato plants our neighbor has given us have gotten too big to ignore anymore.  Christophe planted them all this morning and this weekend we will finish with my seedlings and the rest of the garden.  The “rest of the garden” also comes from our neighbor, who grows everything from seed.  Apparently, she has such a green thumb she can make anything grow just by willing it.  Thanks to her, our garden will soon have all different varieties of peppers, zucchini, eggplants, cucumbers, and pumpkins.  All in all, the garden consists of hundreds of plants, a somewhat monstrous undertaking.

In the past, we used to plant everything in one day.  We would wake up early, get the plants from our neighbor, and start right in on the garden.  We worked throughout the day, but we often didn’t finish until after dark and we would drag ourselves back to the house and collapse once inside.  We didn’t do it this way by choice; Christophe used to work in a sawmill far away and returned home late and exhausted; there was no way he could have tackled even part of the plantation on a weekday night.  As for my part, it was my first few years here.  I never had a garden larger than a kitchen table; I was overwhelmed and unsure.  I didn’t want our neighbor’s hard work to go bad just because of me.  Christophe wouldn’t have let me anyway; even though the work is long and exhausting, there is a satisfaction in looking back at a job well done, and he revels in that moment.

We still have that moment, but thanks to a few changes, we’re able to spread it out over a few days.  We’re still dirty and tired at the end of it, but at least we’re enjoying it and the garden better for it.  I know we are.  So, this weekend, we’ll do the very last round of planting for this summer. I don’t know how many plants are awaiting our attention, I imagine a lot, but I’m pretty excited about it and will finally be able to look back at our completed work without squinting my eyes through the twilight.



Christophe planting on the upper terrace.



Fruits of Labor

Taken in July 2006.
 This is less than half of the garden, which extends past the stone wall and over doubles in size.  Only part of the upper terrace can be seen.

This is the time when things start to get busy in the garden.  Some of the garden is planted, some already needs weeding, and some, like the strawberries, is already giving fruit.  This is our goal, but it means I have to be prepared for making jam that night, and sometimes I’m not always up for the task.  That’s life with the cycle of a garden, and while sometimes it means making jam late into the evening, it also means having a plethora of things to keep us busy and bushels upon bushels of fresh food to eat.

Besides having great produce at our fingertips all summer long, the pleasure of working and accomplishing something with our own hands is something to find pride in.  We like watching the garden grow due to our hard efforts, and believe me, things from Nature here don’t come easy.  Forget the romantic idea about Southern France, not all of it is a cake walk.  There are lavender fields, botanical gardens, and some of the best honey you’ll ever eat, but there is also the daily reality of life in a Mediterranean environment.  The dirt is rocky and poor.  The sun beats down hard and days are long and hot – and there is no air conditioning in a 600 year old house.  We water the garden in the evening so the plants get the most out of it, and the watering the garden is all done by hand – when there is water, that is. 

The work is hard, but we do it willingly; we don’t need the garden to survive.  We do it because we want to.  We want to feel satisfied after a long day and see the fruits of labor.  These fruits, which we conserve to get us morally through the cold and windy nights of winter, are why we toil and do what we do.  Some have asked why we make things so difficult when there are easier routes: don’t mend a stone wall when cement will do; don’t build a fence with string will suffice; don’t grow a garden in a land so hard.

Making jam after the sun has already set is not always my idea of a fun evening, but it is time well spent.  I see the fruits of my labor and I get to go to bed happily knowing it will be there on the table in the morning waiting for me.  I have accomplished something, and I also get to join in its spoils.



This is one of my favorite views of the garden.  It's taken fron a wall on the upper terrace.  The hoses seen are not used to water with sprinkers, but rather to fill up the zinc tub seen.  We plunge watering cans into it and water all the plants by hand.



Out, out you go; out out with you.

The race is over: all the seeds I coddled by stating them indoors have finally been transplanted to the seedling box next to the garden.  It’s been two months and I’ve chased the sun around the house with four boxes of seeds in hopes to get them to grow.  Unfortunately, it’s been an overcast spring, so there hasn’t been much sunshine.  Despite my best efforts, the seedlings stayed small and are stunted in comparison to the seedlings of previous years.  I wasn’t able to transplant them outside until recently because it’s been too cold, so they haven’t been able to profit from the momentary breaks in the clouds.  This clearly hasn’t been typical “Southern France weather”.

Disappointed as I might be about their dwarf-like size, the plants have another month before being transplanted into the garden so there might be hope for them yet.  In addition to tomatoes and hot peppers I also seeded potimarron and butternut squash.  Potimarron is an heirloom squash and butternut, while quite common in the United States, is just starting to grow in popularity in France.  Christophe discovered it for the first time a few years ago and found it to be a worthy addition to the garden, which, if you knew how he defended space for the tomatoes, you would know it made quite an impact on him.

Until the big plantation – the tomatoes, eggplants, green peppers, and pumpkin, plus everything in the seedling box - the work in the garden is minimal, except for some watering and weeding.   I’ll take the break; I’m tired of chasing the sun from window to window and having to walk around the living room like it’s a game of Twister in order not to step on the trays of seeds I’ve started.  It’s time for the plants to grow – and chase after their own sun for a while.

Springtime Garden

We have lots of yellow and purple irises.



Rosemary



Our garden is more of a springtime garden, rather than a summer spectacular.  Summers are very hot and dry, and anything that requires too much water just isn’t going to make it here.  Spring’s seasonal rains and damp weather helps everything flourish.  We mow the lawn weekly just trying to keep it in check, but as soon as summer’s heat sets in, most things have wilted and even the grass goes yellow.  We generally don’t have to mow again until autumn. Summer has its advantages, but not for our flowers, so that’s why I say it’s a springtime garden.  It’s at its best about now, so let me share some of the flowers we have blooming.

Valeriane in front of lavendar.



pink roses



Lily of the Valley



Red roses




These remind me of yellow pom-poms, but I have no idea what they are called.



Lilac



A flowering succulent.




Clematis



Clematis





Pleasure of the Season: The First Tomato

“Pleasures of the Season” is a series of posts which appear from time to time.  They focus on something special that occurs only seasonally, often fleeting, and something we anticipate.  They highlight moments of what I’ve learned about living with the seasons since moving to Southern France.

It started in early April with a handful of seeds that we saved from the year before.  I planted each one individually, packed them all in a crate, and chased the sunlight around the house with them until they had finally broken through the soil.  We watched and watered them, occasionally bringing them outside when the weather was warm enough.  Slowly, they inched their way upwards and small foliage appeared.  Most of the seeds produced a plant, and we were happy with our overall success rate, for we knew we would lose more along the way before the plants had reached full maturity.

June arrived, along with the construction of a small green house.  The six inch plants were transferred outside and were deeply planted in the rich composted dirt so stronger roots would form.  They suddenly looked dwarfed, but we knew it for the better.  Each morning, we would descend to the garden to open the green house, and inspect the night’s progress.  Weeds would be removed, the plants would be watered, and then left to soak in the sun and grow.  The process would be repeated before the sun had set to close the green house so the small plants wouldn’t be exposed to the cool, mountain night air.  Most continue to thrive, but we also dealt with a few causalities along the way.

Late June brought some summer days.  It was time to transfer the plants to the garden.  One by one the seedlings were removed from their protective enclosure and planted into the ground in rows.  By week’s end, all had survived.  A few weeks passed, stakes are added, and the growing plants are gently pruned and tied up.  Daily watering became a must, even though the summer has not been as blistering hot as previous ones.  Eventually, flowers appeared which formed into small, green fruit.  We watched again, and mark their growth with daily conversations on their progress.  Then, one started to ripen.  Slow at first, but its color changed with each passing day until finally, the day arrived: the first tomato from the garden.

Introducing wheel barrel number 3.

So far, our potato harvest has far surpassed our expectations.  We have gone from counting them singularly, to counting buckets full, to counting crates full, to counting wheel barrels full.  This is our third and I don’t know exactly where we are going to stock all the potatoes, but Christophe is absolutely thrilled.  Thank goodness he harvested the rest of the potatoes when he did because yesterday we had quite a surprise in the garden.  A boar had dug its way through our patch and unearthed potatoes were left scattered on the ground like confetti after a party.  Luckily, it stopped within feet of the saffron because I might have had a culinary heart attack if it had been touched.  Christophe and I were left picking up the potato wreckage in the small, decimated field.  The boar’s handy work made harvesting those still in the ground difficult because we could not see where previous harvesting had stopped since its burrowing had uprooted all the plants.  However, after close inspection, we noticed it didn’t attack the potatoes.  They were just unearthed and left on the ground.  This is strange because a boar can destroy a potato field within minutes.  The boar was looking for worms, which it thankfully found more enticing than our tubers.  This hasn’t stopped our worrying though.  Last night, we took a tour of the garden before going to bed.  Our flashlight revealed a visitor had been present and a few stones were hurled into the woods below followed by loud shouting for good measure.  Looks like this is going to be daily ritual until late autumn when the garden is finished for the year.

To market, to market...

I have a notebook where I jot down ideas of things that I want to share about living in France.  One of those ideas has been staring back at me for a while: the markets.  The markets are part of France’s folklore with abundant quality and a wide spectrum of colors; they are everything “French” tourists look for in their visit.  Thanks to their vibrant atmosphere filled with lively colors, they turn the mundane task of shopping into a memorable morning adventure.  But, the truth is, it’s been a long time since I’ve been to a market, and according to friends, even longer since a true market like that has existed in our area.

First, let me address why I don’t go to the market.  The biggest reason is our garden.  It’s huge, and why it does not produce our annual consumption of vegetables, it does provide for us handsomely.  By November, our freeze is full of vegetables that we have not been able to eat fresh.  Next, if I want apples, there are several different wild apples trees that produce amazing fruit in the fall.  Walnuts, chestnuts, blackberries, and pears also grow wild within minutes from my front door.  Three crates of wonderfully ripe peaches arrived this week from a friend, and if I feel like cherries, I just harvest them in early June.  I forgot to mention that I get overrun with figs in late September.  No, we don’t have all of what we need at our fingertips, but I’m not going to find any better going to local market for these products.

The few times I have been to the market, I generally see what I find at the grocery store, I just get bumped and jostled more and it’s a bit louder.  In France, the origins of all produce needs to be labeled, so the peppers from Spain in the market most likely came from the same producer as the one in the grocery store.  There is just a price difference.  I must note, however, I have seen one exception to this and I had no doubt the green peppers I bought came from the saleswoman’s garden because their small twisted shapes resembled the ones we grow.  And, particularly in the summer, the markets are overrun with tourists.  Yes, the region in which I live thrills on this business, so I’m not knocking it, but there are many dishonest salespeople who profit from the image of the French market, jack up their prices when an accent is heard, or don’t sell the real deal.  If I want fruit that I cannot get on my own, I go to a local fruit stand where I am known.  I might be known as being an American, but I am also known as a good customer and year around resident.

Here, I must acknowledge that there are numerous honest and wholesome producers.  There are many products that cannot be found anywhere else than the market and those people should be noted; real producers do exist.  I just think they are few and far between at our local market, and I think that is because of the crowd the market is catering to. 

Our friends, Monsieur and Madame Gousse, used to buy at the local market all the time, but they’ve stopped for this reason.  They welcome the tourist to the region, but they do not welcome those who are taking advantage of them by selling store bought fruit and passing it off as homegrown.  These people are ruining the image of the market.  In the past, the markets emphasized local products and the salespeople where ones who cultivated a relationship with the clientele.  I’ve seen bagged carrots under a salesperson’s stand who got upset when his bluff was called as not being from his garden.  Truth be told, knock off clothes are the most common item.  Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing markets in the region, but they are more specialized and don’t run year around.  (I’m impatiently waiting for the return of the goat cheese market.)  Markets in the region can be good, but I think they need to be addressed with a word of caution as to what is really being sold.  Is it the product or the image?

Late Spring Planting in the Garden



View of staked tomato plants from an upper terrace in the garden



In April, we planted potatoes and onions in our vegetable garden.  They go into the ground early because of their longer growing season and because they need the cool spring nights to get started.  They should be ready to harvest in just a few short weeks.  Last week, we finished the second stage of planation.  We have the usual suspects – tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, zucchini, and squash, alongside some herbs and berries, which are about to finish their production.

Our neighbor, Madame Gousse, starts all her plants from seed and years ago, would give Christophe the extra seedling that did not fit into her garden.  As the years went by, she simple began seeding more and more and now provides us with all our annual vegetables.  Depending how the seeds took, the amount of vegetables we have each year can vary, but it usually is in the neighborhood of 150 seedlings to plant.  In past years, we tackled this planation all in a single day.  At first, it was fun, but like many big projects there comes a time when the end seems too far away and the amusement of it has been zapped away.  We would drag ourselves back to the house in twilight wanting only a shower and a place to sit down.

Happily, this year is different.  We finally wised up and spread out the job over a few days.  We planted 10 different varieties of tomatoes, 70 in all, and got them staked up to new reeds Christophe cut down from the river bank.  Then, the next day, we finished with the rest of the plants.  And you know what?  The fun came back.  We found the pleasure of planting a garden again.  I know the garden is work; days will come when I am tired and I’ll come back to the house coated in sweat and dirt.  But I’m happy to re-find the anticipation of planting something with hopes of how it will turn out instead of just wanting the job to be done.