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.