Unconsciousness/June

I’m changing the rules a bit and writing more posts in English to appease the FG. Who probably won’t read this anyway. Si vous souhaitez que j’écris plus en français ou moitié/moitié, faites signe dans les commentaires et ceux qui parleront le plus fort seront peut-être entendus. It’s June, and the unconsciousness of the title refers to several different things. Perhaps it is the what happens when you put your nose to the edge of the bocal of Rhone wine mixed with sugar and eau de vie and walnuts and spices. Perhaps it is the feeling of unconnection that comes from working a bit too much under a bit too much stress, because it’s that time of year again.  Or the birds who keep flying into our windows, mistaking glass for sky.  Or is it the ‘inconscience’ of the project here at Maffay?  Consciousness is a construct, nyah, it’s highly relative.  Perhaps the only true consciousness especially in terms of building projects, is a heady mix of omniscience and prescience at once, and has nothing at all to do with us. This is just another way of saying that we have come to the understanding that it doesn’t matter when the project finishes, we’re just along for the ride.

Everyone says it’s not a year for fruit. The walnut tree has literally five walnuts, and is taking extreme umbrage at having its roots bulldozed about, and so we had to kidnap M. Roullier père and drive him to an undisclosed location where he helped us pick walnuts off his tree (whose branches are of course weighted down with citrussy (really!) smelling globes. This was on June 21, to make our nocino/vin de noix. The elderflower (fläderblom/sirop de sureau) syrup was made back at the end of May, and we’ve almost drunk alll of it. The cherry tree has, to date, yielded exactly three pots of jam, any only three because all the groseilles and blackcurrant were coerced into the pots as well. As for the gooseberries, Gabriel and i each had one perfect one, and then about three not-yet-ripe ones where we tried anyway, hopes dashed in our search for the taste of the first, ripe ones we had eaten. The prunes look puny, but we’ll know for sure in September. We’ll get enough apples to hold in the palms of both our hands: (count, that makes about four); however the quince seems to be beating the odds and it will be a bumper crop if all goes well, about 5-6 for the first year for the sapling planted during December’s frosts. Our terrace garden is strangely lilleputian with the sole exception of the yellow zucchini which gives me hope on a daily basis that we’ll eventually eat some garden vegetables with our pasta. The tomatoes are content to flower, the peas as well, and the basil has finally decided to do something other than require a microscope for viewing, but we’ve discovered that slugs like basil, a lot. The sweet corn is pretty pathetic. And the artichoke in the photos you’ll see, if you’re patient enough to thumb through them, is actually the size of a penny – that’s the Swiss chard from Jenny’s packet of seeds in the background.

But, the plants are in the sewer beds, and they’re taking root and thriving, and next month we’ll put the willow sprigs into the third bed.

All the rest of the garden is a profusion of roses and weeds and lilies. And we are in love with the phacelie, and the bees are too, and just today we went out before breakfast (it sounds very pastoral and country to say that, but in reality it was 9am and the sun was not low on the horizon) and saw that the red linen flowers are blooming. And the bees were already at their phacelie cafeteria, which made us hungry, so we went in for pancakes.

Low tide and how Max came to Maffay

We went to the beach on the day of the low tide this month with Annick and Cyril du Chevrolais, and picked up about 7kg of mussels, and lots and lots of tiny clams, and a few small crabs that you boil red and salty and then crunch into. G and i had a delightful mussel delirium meal, with oven roasted potatoes, and decided that we’ll follow Annick to skim the sands of low tides every month. This year there are 13 moons, we’re in luck.

And I think it was the weekend after that, but we went to Angers for work, and that weekend stayed over with our friends the famille Hodé who live in Liré country, the place that every French schoolchild knows because they memorize a sonnet about la douceur angévine being better than Rome’s Palatine hill, written many years ago by a man whose name now is emblazoned in neon on a bar alongside the Loire: Le Joachim. This is where Max is from, son of Nahla and a passing tomcat. Isa and Fréd welcomed us royally with margaritas and fajitas (heureuse comme Ulysse, i was), and fresh farm eggs, mutton, and potatoes, and homemade vinegar… and Mathis and Laurine and Gabriel made forts and played with kittens and ran around outside and ate ice cream and had a grand time. And we took home Max, farm eggs, homemade vinegar to start our own, and the promise that they will come and visit us once we have a little more than a roof, shower and septic system.

Ponies

More photos from the end of May: with his amoureuse and her kid sister, Gabriel went to the circus and also on a pony ride. It was a Wild West show for gnomes, a decorous walk around the lake on poneys on the very last day of May. Romane and Inès and Gabriel had a lovely time. The parents and the poneys had a nice walk. Gabriel liked it best when it went fast. If you’ve ever tried to run alongside a pony in barefeet and rubber boots, holding onto its halter as you balance a nikon and a camera bag, you can understand that I liked it best when it went slowly.

C’était la fête au village…

Sans le savoir nous avons déménagé tout près d’un petit hameau qui est source de danseurs, bons vivants, palettistes, karaokeurs, et la future coopérative fromagère de la Chèvre-au-lait… le 24 nous avons fêté toutes ces choses et d’autres sous les trombes de pluie, mangeant du bon mouton, diverses grillades, salades, desserts et plusieurs vins, roupettes, rhums, punchs en accompagnement. Virginie, Emilie, David, Romain et Gaël étaient nos hôtes et nous sommes beaucoup amusés, et promettons peut-être de boire moins la prochaine fois pour pouvoir prendre plus de photos, ou peut-être pas.

Kaolin and Wich!

Our great friends came back to save us, after Paul and Joycie’s departure, from the hell of a half-built house and a messy kitchen. Kaolin (the lovely carolina) took charge of the kitchen and turned out savory meals at the apogee of nutritional completion and plain deliciousness, and Wich changed hats from author, expert on the Rosebud reservation, and car racing enthusiast, to become a consultant on hanging insulation and sheetrock. He also celebrated his birthday with us, Kaolin translated a swedish recipe from the Rosendal’s cookbook to make us a delicious carrotcake. And Pierre-Yves brought by two bottles of goutte/gnol, made in Maffay over 25 years ago, which are waiting for our dear friends to come back, and I’ve had to promise that I won’t drink them. Even out of desperation that C+R are now back on the left side of the Atlantic.

During their stay, with the help of half of Simon’s tools, and some genuine Swedish mosquito netting, we cut custom-sized ventilation holes for under the rafters that look like little eyes, which we then mudded into place with hemp and lime. Then we cut pegs, and started putting them up, and put up the first layer of insulation. The rough details are this: 20cm of fiberglass laid horizonatally, 20 cm of fiberglass laid vertically, a reflective aluminum layer, then a second layer of rafters onto which the sheetrock will be screwed. It’s going to be, in Wich’s terms, ‘tighter than a bull’s ass in fly season’ otherwise he’s coming back in January to make me take it down and start over.

Wich devised a system to hang the sheetrock and insulation for which i cannot divulge details, as patents are pending, but it is ingenious because it allows me to work mostly by myself except for the heavy parts, plus it’s very logical, and solid. His consulting fees are steep, but well-earned. And we’re getting scurvy again now that we’re back to our pasta-only diet since Kaolin’s departure and wish she would come back soon to laugh about being ecoterrorists, the assorted woo-woos of the world, and make us eat our vegetables well. She also is responsible for teaching Gabriel to whistle.

Klara bis

Une autre photo de Lilla Klara, qui, selon les nouvelles de l’hôtel dieu, dort bien la nuit et ne pleure presque pas.  Et selon l’évidence photographique, sait déjà plaisanter avec l’objectif.

Klara! (midsommar)

Klara Joyce Myrtie Hingamp est née, le 19 juin (le 4ème anniversaire du jour où ses parents, Malin et Simon, se sont rencontrés), et elle est, selon sa mère, ‘magique’ et selon moi, sublime. En plus, elle ne pleurait pas, et ouvrait bien ses yeux pour la photo, et a fait une superbe baillement nous permettant de constater qu’elle n’a pas encore de dents. On dirait qu’elle sourit presque, heureuse d’être née dans la famille Hingamp-Andersson, et d’être la petite soeur d’Anton, et la petite-fille et nièce des gens aussi loin que Corvallis, Pjätteryd, Marseille, Londres, et Montbuisson (dans l’ordre de proximité géographique).

Nous sommes ravis d’être là pour la voir grandir et s’épanouir; elle est en bonne voie.

Max

Not much has moved forward in terms of our home at Maffay due other work, but, we do have great news: Maffay has a new master, Max, with whom we’re both completely enamored, especially at night when he licks the perfume off my neck with his catscratchy tongue, or when he sits on my lap as i work at the computer, or when he follows Gabriel around the garden or jumps around on the bed like a little mexican bean. This is Max in his favorite nap spot. He comes from the same place as Joachim du Bellay, the land of Liré, from a visit to our friends the wonderful famille Hodé, and we think he’s a very literary cat because he already likes listening to bedtime stories, and is soothed by the clatter of computer keys. He naps as much as i would like to, and eats as much as Gabriel, almost, and like Gabriel, thinks he is a tiger.