Good or bad? / Bon ou mauvais?

I found these beetles on our Borlotti bean pods. They didn’t seem to be eating the beans. Does anyone know whether they’re good or bad?

Est-ce que vous savez si ces scarabées sont bons ou mauvais?

The bees are good, I know, and so is the lavender / les abeilles sont bonnes, je le sais, et aussie la lavande.

And the oleander flower are lovely, smell wonderful but the whole plant is deadly poisonous / Et les fleurs du laurier rose sont jolies, il sent très bon, mais le plant entier est vénéneux.

The garden in June / Le jardin en juin

Today has been the hottest day of the year so far, over 30 degrees C at midday, so how is everything doing in the garden? / Aujourd’hui on a eu la journée la plus chaude de l'année jusqu'à ici. Donc, comment va le jardin?

The leek flower has finally come out / La fleur de poireau s’est finalement ouvert.

We hope it will provide us with a lot of seed / Nous éspèrons que cette fleur nous donnerons beaucoup de semences.

The olives are growing – these ones on our Lucque tree, the first year it has had olives on it.

Les olives poussent sur le Lucque. Ces sont son ses premiers olives.

We have beans on the haricots (Beurre and Purple King) and the Borlottis (left above). / Nous avons des haricots verts (Beurre et Purple King) et Borlotti (gauche).

The peppers and tomatoes are growing / Les poivrons et les tomates poussent ….

and the grapes /

et les raisins.

The garlic heads are small but better than last year / Les têtes d'ail sont petites, mais mieux que l'année dernière.

We’re eating courgettes every day and I stuffed some of the flowers with mint to cook on the barbecue. / On mange les courgettes tous les jours et j’ai fait des fleurs de courgette farcies à la menthe.

The stream from the spring is still running well, so we have plenty of water – we hope it continues. / Le ruisseau de la source coule bien toujours, donc on a beaucoup d’eau – on éspère que ça continuera.

Any failures? Well, yes. The pepper plants we grew from seed haven’t grown well at all and we’ve had to buy plants. Everyone here says the same. A lot of our bean plants, especially the climbing ones have been eaten by birds as they germinated. We’re protecting the new sowings with straw now and that seems to be working.

Rosé wine saved … but the battle for non-GM rice goes on / le vin rosé sauvé … la bataille pour le riz non-GM continue

Good news today – that the European Union will not after all allow rosé wine to be made by mixing red and white wines. The winemakers of France, Spain and Italy have been campaigning against this in order to preserve the traditional method of making rosé with red grapes and taking the juice from the skins early in the process.

De bonne nouvelle aujourd'hui – l'Union européenne a decidé de ne permettre pas le mélange des vins rouges et blancs pour faire le vin rosé. Les vignorons de la France, l'Espagne et l'Italie ont fait campagne pour garder la methode traditionelle.

We drank to this in the garden at lunchtime today with a glass of rosé from the Domaine des Pascales in Gabian.

And now the battle to preserve non-GM rice / et puis la campagne pour garder le riz non-GM….

On the Indian Earth blog today emmani has posted a photo-journalist piece about rice which links to the Greenpeace Hands off our Rice petition and campaign. GM rice would be detrimental to the way of life, livelihood and nutrition of people all over the world. This is an important issue so please take a few minutes to read, listen and, I hope, sign the petition.

Definitely not GM …

Our first St Pierre tomato / la première tomate St Pierre.

Green / Vert

There’s a little more hope for the environment today – in the elections for the European parliament Europe Ecologie, the greens in France, have more than doubled their number of seats to 14 and their percentage of the vote to 16.28%.

Un peu d’espoir pour l’environnement – Europe Ecologie avec 16,28 % et 14 sieges.

An early pagan fire / Un feu païen d’avance

This pagan lighting of huge bonfires, especially in the Midi and in Catalunya, usually takes place on 24 June, midsummer day and the saint’s day of St John.  This year in Gabian we celebrated a couple of weeks early, by the river last night.  It was a beautiful evening with dark clouds clearing away and the setting sun lighting up the village.

The Occitan flag was held up by a young fire service volunteer while 150 of us sang ‘Se Canta’ – an Occitan song, almost an anthem.  Then we had a meal of couscous and mergez (lamb sausages) cooked on a wood fire and quite a lot of red wine.  Later the bonfires were lit.  The tradition is that you jump over the fire, but these were a bit high for that!

Cette année à Gabian nous avons fêté la fête de St Jean en avance. Près de la rivière nous avons chanté 'Se Canta' – un chanson occitan. Puis nous avons mangé du couscous et des mergez grillés au feu de bois. Finalement, on a allumé les trois feus.

 

It was a full moon too.

La lune a été pleine à la fin de la soirée.

 

 

 

In the garden today, the leek flower is at last beginning to open / la fleur du poireau est enfin à la pointe de s'ouvrir.

And we picked our first cucumber and two Lezignan sweet onions / et on a ramassé le premier concombre et deux oignons de Lezignan.

A few notes on 1 June / Quelques notes le 1 juin

After a thunder storm and a lot of rain yesterday the garden looked good in the sun today.  / Après des orages et beaucoup de pluie hier, le jardin est beau aujourd'hui.

The dwarf haricot beans Purple King are flowering – lovely mauve and purple colours.

Les haricots nain Purple King fleurissent – des couleurs jolies mauve et violette.

 

And we ate the first courgettes of the season / et on a mangé les premières courgettes de la saison.

	Straight from the plant, to the chopping board and onto the grill with some red onions which are beginning to bolt but taste delicious grilled whole like this.

A kind way to tie up tomato plants / Une façon douce d’attacher les tomates

The tomato plants are growing and the wind has been blowing, so today I spent some time attaching them to their canes to prevent them from being damaged.  Gardeners here use torn strips of fabric to tie their plants, rather than garden string or wires, and it seems to me that this is much better, much gentler, for the plants.  They’re free and it is also a good way of recycling old pieces of fabric – the strips we used today are in their third life, having previously been part of a sheet and then a dust sheet.

Nous avons recyclé des morceaux de tissu pour attacher les tomates.

This leek has been about to flower for several days.  It is nearly as tall as I am and we’re hoping for a spectacular flower and then some seed we can save.  /  Ce poireau est à la pointe de fleurir depuis quelques jours.  Il est presque aussi grand que moi et on attend une fleur impressionante et puis des semences que nous pourrons garder.