Apricot buds and a new cold frame

One of the good things about writing a garden blog is that I can check back and see how this year compares with last year and the year before.  Spring seems to be late this year, but looking back to last February I can see that the apricot buds are at about the same stage this year, although the daffodils are certainly later.  Last year we had daffodils in flower in time for St David’s day – that won’t happen this year.

The apricot tree should be in flower in a few days’ time.

I sowed some mangetout peas about a month ago and had almost given up hope of the plants appearing.  I thought the seeds had been washed away by some of the heavy rain we’ve had and today I decided to sow some more in the same place.  Luckily I had a close look first because I noticed that they’re coming up at last.  We’ve covered them with chicken wire because the birds seem to like them.

mangetout peas emerging and, right, the garlic doing well.

But the daffodils are late this year.

We’ve already got two rustic-looking cold frames in the garden, but our neighbour gave us an old window so Lo Jardinièr decided to make another one – they’ll all come in useful when our pepper and cucumber plants need a bit of protection before being planted out.  He made a base of sand covered with old terracotta floor tiles, made walls with concrete blocks and rested the window on top – very simple.

While he was doing that I sowed another double row of broad beans and a row of spinach.  We lost at least three sowings of spinach to heavy rain in the autumn, each time I re-sowed them there would be another storm and no sign of spinach plants, except for a solitary one which has survived the winter.  We miss having the young spinach leaves in our salads, so we hope to grow some now before the weather gets too hot and dry. 

Today’s harvest:

Rosemary, thyme and bay, which the garden provides all through the year, whatever the weather, chard, which is just recovering from the cold weather and starting to grow again, and cabbage.

Some flowers in the garrigue / Quelques fleurs en garrigue

It was a lovely clear sunny morning and from Montesquieu we could see Mont Canigou and the Pyrenees, the peaks still covered with snow.  / Il a fait beau et clair ce matin et de Montesquieu on a pu voir le Mont Canigou et les Pyrénées, leurs sommets couverts de neige.

Olive trees live for centuries and often the original tree has died while new young trees have grown up around the beautiful shapes of the hollow centre.  / Les oliviers vivent pour plusiers siècles et souvent l'arbre original est mort et des arbres nouveaux ont poussé autour les formes belles du centre creux.

In the garrigue, the scrubby vegetation that grows on uncultivated hills, this is the time of year when the plants flower before dying back during the dry summer.  /  Dans le garrigue, la végétation broussailleuse qui pousse sur les collines, les plantes fleurissent à cette saison avant de perdre leurs feuilles et leurs tiges pendant la sécheresse d'été.

I find the website http://www.maltawildplants.com/ very helpful when I'm trying to identify Mediterranean plants.  It is an incredible work by one man, Stephen Mifsud, who is cataloguing and describing the flowering plants which grow in Malta.  Many of these are common to the area all around the Mediterranean, so it is an extremely useful data base.

Today we saw / aujourd'hui on a vu:

Cistus albidus

Clustered sulla, Hedysarum glomeratum

Crimson pea, Lathyrus clymenum

Thyme and wild asparagus growing together. Le thym et les asperges sauvages ensemble.

Asphodelus albus

Aphyllanthes monspeliensis

Back at the garden, Lo Jardinièr finished making a new raised bed and planted out lettuce plants our nighbour had given us.  He made a wooden frame with some cast-off planks, put it on a patch of rough ground we haven't used before and filled it with a mixture of half compost and half soil.

Lo Jardinièr a construit une parterre pour les salades.

A cold market and garlic soup / un marché froid et la soupe à l'ail

It's cold and grey today.  The woman on the fish stall, where we bought a squid, said she has got used to being outside all morning and not wearing gloves but she was shivering behind her display of cold, wet fish.  The charcutier told us there was snow in his home village of Lacaune, in the mountains to the north-west.  We bought some warming produce - poitrine salée to use in split-pea soup, fresh and cured sausage, garlic and some beautiful lemons.

Aujourd'hui il fait froid et gris.  La poissonière duquelle nous avons acheté un encornet a dit qu'elle s'est habituée au temps, mais elle grelottait derrière son étalage de poissons froids et muoillées.  Le charcutier nous a dit qu'il y a de la neige chez lui à Lacaune, dans les montagnes au nord-ouest d'ici.  Nous avons acheté des produits qui vont nous chauffer - de la poitrine salée pour la soupe de pois cassés, de la saucisse fraîche, du saucisson sec, de l'ail et des beaux citrons.

Garlic and thyme soup / la soupe à l'ail et au thym

I used the recipe in one of my favourite cookery books, André Soulier's La Cuisine Secrète du Languedoc-Roussillon.  He gives several recipes for garlic soup and this is the simplest.  He says that it is eaten in Nîmes as a morning-after remedy for those who have over-indulged at the ferias.  I can't give any guarantees about this, but it certainly tastes as though it will keep the winter germs at bay!

J'ai utilisé la recette d'André Soulier dans La Cuisine Secrète du Languedoc-Roussillon.  C''est la plus simple de ses plusiers recettes.  Il dit qu'elle se mange à Nîmes le landemain des courses des férias quand "la soupe au thym apaise les maux de tête et les aigreurs d'estomac".  Je ne peux pas offrir une guarantie, mais je suis sûre que les saveurs offrent la protection contre les microbes d'hiver!

To a litre of boiling salted water add the peeled cloves from 1 head of garlic (M. Soulier uses 6 cloves, but I like garlic so I added more), a bunch of thyme, 3 bay leaves, 1 onion studded with cloves.  Let it cook for 1 hour.  Put it through a chinois or a mouli légumes and reheat.  Serve garnished with chopped parsley.

Squid rings in batter / calamares à la romaine

 

We bought a lovely fresh squid in the market so that Lo Jardinièr could make one of his specialities.  The recipe will be on the Mediterranean food blog.

Nous avons acheté un joli encornet pour une des specialités del Jardinièr.  La recette sera sur le blog La cuisine mediterranéenne

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October weekend / un weekend en octobre

Today was a perfect October Saturday - an almost cloudless sky, a mid day temperature of 25 C and not too much hard work to do in the garden.

Aujourd'hui c'était un samedi parfait d'octobre - le ciel presque sans nuages, le temperature à midi a été 25 C et il n'y avait pas trop de travail dur dans le jardin.

The garden is rather untidy at the moment, in transition from summer into autumn into winter, and the shadows longer, but it's still somewhere to enjoy lunch in the sun. I like to decide what will go in the salad as I'm walking around the garden, looking to see what is ready to eat.

Le jardin est un peu fouillis en ce moment, en changeant de l'été en automne et vers l'hiver. Les ombres sont plus longs mais c'est toujours un endroit où on peut profiter du soleil et prendre le dîner. Il me plaît de choisir la salade quand je fais un tour du jardin, en regardant quelles plantes sont prêtes à manger.

Today I found a colourful mix of lettuce, wild rocket, tomatoes and thyme. / Aujourd'hui j'ai trouvé un melange aux couleurs vives de laitue, rouquette sauvage, tomates et thym.

We ate it with grilled pork and green peppers from the garden. / On l'a mangé avec du porc grillé et des poivrons verts grillés du jardin.

Mizuna update / mizuna mise à jour

Before we went away the snails had eaten some of the mizuna plants which Kate planted for us. We put lavender cuttings around them and this seems to have turned the snails away. The surviving plants are growing well and will soon be ready to be added to salads.

Avant de partir nous avons vu que des escargots ont mangé quelques plantes de mizuna que Kate a planté. Nous les avons entourées de boutures de lavande et elles ont découragé les escargots. Les plantes qui surviennent poussent bien et bientôt seront prêtes à ajouter aux salades.

Mediterranean summer

What is it that symbolises the Mediterranean for me? The olive tree, of course. It grows all around the Mediterranean, as well as in other parts of the world, and this kind of climate is the only one it thrives in. People in the Midi, as in other Mediterranean countries, have a special attachment to it. It's such an important tree that it deserves a post all to itself - and I'll do this one day soon. For now I'll just say that I think it is the most beautiful of all trees and I can't imagine now living anywhere where it doesn't grow.

Then there's the smell of thyme as I crush its leaves when I walk through scrubby garrigue, the flowers at the side of the road in springtime, the taste of it in cooking, leaves sprinkled on tomatoes, on goats' cheese. We grew it in Wales, too, but without the heat of the Mediterranean sun it was never the same.

Summer begins properly for me when we hear the cicadas - they've just started here in the last week. Their chattering begins when the temperature reaches 26 degrees C, and as the sun rises in the mornings and reaches higher up a hillside you can hear each tree being 'switched on' as the cicadas sense its heat.

And oleanders. Their flowers in different shades of white, pink, red, are all coming out now, lining the road at the entrance to villages, in gardens and parks. They're all beautiful (although poisonous), but for me it's the pink ones which are the real oleanders - the ones we had in the garden when I was a child in Libya.

oleander

And the Mediterranean sea itself: