Signs Of Spring And Miscellany

 

Signs Of Spring

The first signs of spring are around. Intermittent days of warm sunshine are becoming more frequent, japonica bushes are in bloom as are some fruit trees, almond or wild cherry, and I have four daffodils in bloom in front of my house. The rosemary bushes are in flower too, a light shade of blue. It’s just a beginning but turns my thoughts to gardening and the prospect of asparagus and strawberries before long.

In the front there are a couple of score more daffodils and narcissi still to bloom. The irises I cut down and replanted last year have regrown robustly so I am expecting a good show from them in about a month’s time. Everything on the balcony has survived the winter and I have decided not to continue with flowers in troughs there this year, to cut down on watering later, so there is little to do there or elsewhere in the front until may. I need to lightly prune the vine that grows over the balcony but that is about all for the moment as regards the house. After friend Gérard pruned the vine heavily last year I had a bumper crop of grapes and can hope for the same this year.

I’ve been over to the allotment just to put sleeves on the leeks to increase the portion that is white and do a little weeding. Nothing much seems to have moved over the winter, probably because of the inclement weather so the leeks won’t be worth pulling for at least another month. I noticed that some cress (lamb’s lettuce) has self-seeded so I’ll have a crop of that this year. The thornless blackberry has produced some new branches so I should have a good crop of blackberries too, as last year. I’ve bought two sacks of chicken shit fertiliser ready for when I start planting, a box of seed potatoes to start sprouting and a pack of spring onion seeds which I’ve sown in a trough on my balcony. So I just need to wait about a month now, maybe doing some weeding in the meanwhile.

Miscellany

The French seem to me to have an excessive regard for intellectuals. I have a university degree and therefore am classed as an intellectual. Nothing seems to be expected of intellectuals other than lofty thoughts and just about everything is excused. “Well, he’s an intellectual; what do you expect?” just about sums it up. Nothing practical s expected, certainly no DIY, and my gardening and boules playing, the latter particularly, are a bit suspect, eccentric.

I can live with that.

Harder to live with is the taste a lot of my friends have for bland food; not badly prepared or badly cooked food but food that to my taste lacks oomph. Or maybe it is just my predilection for herbs and spices, which I rarely cook without. There is a Vietnamese restaurant in Vaison, a woman who makes Thai dishes and one and one who does creole dishes in the village. But the Thai dishes are nothing like those I ate in Thailand and the others I find rather bland. In all cases it’s the spices that are missing, either in quantity or altogether. Well it’s said that there is no accounting for taste. Nonetheless I am cooking a fish curry for friends this week and it will have noticeable chilli, ginger and cloves in it; I’ll probably have to go easy on the chilli though.

The English conversation classes are still going well and are attracting new followers, which is just as well as some of the regulars have recently dropped out for heath reasons. Last week I taught the class to play the Black Widow card game, which I thought appropriate as the rules are simple, any number can play and there is quite a bit of new vocabulary in it. However one member couldn’t get their head around the idea that you need to avoid winning tricks with hearts or the black widow in them. Anyway that puts card games on the agenda for the future. Maybe I’ll get them to teach me some French games.