Peach Lessons

August 2, 2004

Janine Digout is going to give me peach lessons tomorrow. We ate these for dessert last Wednesday and I have to say I have never in my life eaten either a peach or a nectarine as delicious and perfumed as than the ones that she served us that night. And I used to live in California! And we had a peach tree growing in our gardens!

Still there is one thing that Occitania lacks (I can only think of one)… Meyer Lemons. If the Langue d’Oc would have this superior sort of lemon it would be in fact the most perfect place on earth.
(Please read more… )

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le Fauconnier

August 1, 2004

Serge is a childhood friend of Fred (de Kristine) and is a professional falconner. He trains falcons to hunt birds for humans. It seems that falconning is as old as bird eating itself. Hunters would (and still do) ‘beat the rushes’ – make lots of noise in order to flush out the game birds. Seeing the quail and pheasant au plein air, the falcons would swoop in for a nibble. This inspired someone to teach the falcons to give up their prey for a bit of luvvins and the security of knowing that the grits will just keep on coming. Don’t you think that Serge looks a bit like a falcon?

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Poison

July 29, 2004

Oleander means ‘poisonous for man(kind)’ and the flowers, leaves and sap of this plant are indeed poisonous for humans to ingest. Upon my arrival here (2 weeks ago today!) Kristi asked me to take care of her failing oleanders. I got straight to work, watering, inspecting, killing large herds of orange aphids, concocting homemade pesticides to kill the aphids (just soap), and transplanting the oleanders into planters that effectively keep in the moisture.

These days the oleanders are putting on quite a show and this morning when I walked out to give them a look-see I noticed a very funny 6-legged white stamen! A white spider had camouflaged herself in the flower and was waiting for something delicious to come along and become breakfast! I am really pleased with this development because this means that nature has taken over the foul task of dealing with the aphids. If you’re like me and don’t like eating aphids, it’s really nice if another species lends a hand. One woman’s meat is another one’s poison.

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