Onions from Lézignan

‘La Cébe des Lézignan es douça coumo lou pan’ (Occitan for ‘Lézignan onions are sweet as bread’. (from Monsieur Lucas’s website)

This morning we went on our annual trip to Lézignan la Cèbe near Pézenas to buy seedlings of the famous onions that grow there. I wrote about this village and its onions last year so I won’t describe them in detail now, but I’ll just say that they are very sweet when we start to pull them in June to eat in salads or to grill on the barbecue. Later in the summer they become less sweet and we use them for cooking. This morning we planted 50 seedlings next to the 50 seedlings of slightly earlier but similar Spanish onions.

Looking back at last year’s post about Lézignan onions, I see that while Lo Jardinièr planted the onions I sowed haricot beans…and exactly the same happened this year. I sowed a row of Contender beans, a few days later than the tradition date here which is 19 March, St Joseph’s Day.

Hummingbird hawk moth

I’ve seen a couple of these during the past week or so, rather earlier than usual I think, and managed to get a couple of photos of this one on our aubretia flowers this morning:

They’re hard to photograph as they never settle on a flower, but just put down a long proboscis into the centre of the flower, which can be seen here beneath the blur of the beating wings.