Garden, Lunch And Sacred Cows

Autumn Garden

I'm used to a distinct lack of colour in my garden in the autumn but this year has been a pleasant surprise. The weather combination we have had of significant rain with also significant sun and mild temperatures seems to have given all the plants a boost. Yesterday afternoon, after a day of rain, the temperature was 28 degrees in the sun.

At the front the cyclamen are showing red and white, the plumbago, solanum are providing blue and the French marigolds that seemed to be sulking have woken up and are a mass of gold and red. And another (perennial) plant which I have front and back whose name I don't know and which I can't find in my RHS encyclopedia, though it would surely grow in England, is not only still full of blue flowers but its foliage is turning red and yellow.

At the back the red currant sage is a mass of bloom and and has taken up so much space that I will have to cut it back severely over the winter. Other blooms are dotted around: there's a white Japanese anemone, a couple of marigolds still going, a blue salvia, a honeysuckle and some gaura. But what has particularly pleased me are the roses. I have several David Austin bushes that have struggled to get established and the climbers only started to climb significantly last year, four years after they were planted. This year not only have they continued climbing but have decided to produce a second flush of bloom, as they should. In particular the Pilgim which I have growing up an arch has a dozen blooms on it. My Pat Austin has also decided to produce again. I know now that most plants take a considerable time to get established here but often overlook just how long that time can be. In addition, my small olive tree is covered in olives and the rock plants are all scrambling like mad, which promises a good show in the spring when they start bloomimg again. In short, everything is looking much better than I had anticipated.

In the background leaves are falling off the lime and plane trees and the vines are all turning colour. I wondered whether the grape harvest this year would be any good, given the summer drought, but the vignerons I have spoken too all claim that the harvest is good. The sugar content of the grapes should certainly be high but it seems the volume has been quite satisfactory too.

Reflections On A Lunch Conversation

This Sunday Steve and Jo invited me to lunch with friends Armelle, René, Alex and Pauline. As often when we are a mixture of English and French, and the more so since Steve and I have started our English conversation meetings, conversation focussed for a time on differences between our two countries and languages. The conversation was typical of those we have with French friends here which is why I recount it.

I asked if our French friends understood the significance of the date the 5^th of November in England; they didn't. So I explained that, somewhat paradoxically, although we prided ourselves (rightly or not) on being the cradle of democracy we also celebrated a historical attempt to blow the seat of it to smithereens in The 17^th century: Guy Fawkes Day Moreover, an effigy of some sort was burned on the traditional bonfire and, before it became politically unacceptable, this was often the Pope. We didn't burn Jeanne d'Arc anymore since we had already done that very successfully once. René countered that by asking whether we knew the origin of the famous busbies worn by British troops in formal costume. We didn't and René explained the origin in Napoleonic troops.

That got me thinking about conventions of war, which hardly exist today (pace the Geneva Convention, on the rare occasions when it is observed). Doing research for a talk at the English library here I had discovered the origin of the expression “to show one's true colours”. It dates from the 17th century when warships were allowed to get close to enemy ships by the ruse of flying false flags but weren't allowed to fire on them before showing their “true colours”. The convention was apparently normally observed, even by pirates. That reminded of criticisms I had read of American revolutionaries in their war of independence aganst Britain. The complaints at the time were that the revolutionaries didn't wear any brightly coloured uniforms, as the British did, so that they could easily be seen and identified, and they adopted the “cowardly” practice of hiding in woods and behind walls rather than “bravely” standing in the open to be shot at.

That in turn made me wonder what current sacred cows we had now that would be milked ad lib in the future. One, I suspect, may be an extreme preoccupation with hygiene. I asked René if he knew why Swiss cheeses had holes in them and he didn't. I recalled a story of a Swiss cheese enterprise that had created a totally hygienic, hermetically sealed factory and found that the resultant cheese was palatable but had no holes in it. It turned out that the holes in Swiss cheeses owe their presence to minute particles of hay or straw in the milk from which they are made. Ensure the milk is “pure” and you don't get holes. Another example that came to mind was my time in Senegal, when I had the inoculations necessary for entry to the country but nothing else; and I survived the year with just a few days of stomach upset. The American Peace corps were there and had a fully equipped field hospital in Dakar to which they all went every 6 months for check-ups and various inoculations and yet they went down like flies with all sorts of illnesses. I asked a doctor there why this could be so and he suggested that they had quite probably never been exposed to any germs in their lives and, being suddenly exposed to a multitude of them, had little protection against them. So cleanliness may be next to Godliness, as the Victorians liked to maintain, but moderatio in omnibus also applies. The political correctness currently infecting the UK will also, I suspect, be another sacred cow to be milked in the future.