Saturday in Pézenas, Sunday in the garden

Pézenas is our nearest town and our nearest big market, held each Saturday. We don't go very often - we can get almost everything we need most weeks in Gabian and especially around holiday times and in the summer Pézenas market gets very crowded with tourists and visitors. But we wanted to buy some plants from the garden stall there. Just like last year, we've left it a bit late to sow our own chard and leek plants - it's hard to think about winter vegetables in May. Last year we almost left buying the plants too late as well, so we thought we'd better get some soon.

fruit stall in Occitan colours

It's always fun going to this market which stretches for several hundred metres along one of the main streets of the town, from one fountain to another, with stalls selling everything from clothes, bedding, pottery, hats and shoes to vegetables, fish, olives, oysters and cheese. We bought our plants early and asked the stallholder if we could leave them with him while we toured the rest of the market, buying olives, goats' and sheep's cheeses and some delicious walnut bread from the Aveyron.

plants and flowers

much better garlic than ours in the garden

Baskets

and soap

olives and pickles, and goats' cheese from Roujan, the next village to Gabian

Back in the garden, we planted out the leek plants and watered everything.

The afternoon temperatures are reaching 36 or 37 degrees now, so plants are growing really quickly so long as they get enough water. I love this time of the year! One nice surprise is that our first tomato is almost ripe. Last year we picked tomatoes in the last week of June This year after the long cold wet spring I thought they would be much later. But we'll pick this one tomorrow, on the last day of June.

Our grapes are growing

though it's still difficult to imagine them being black and sweet as they should be by the end of August.