Garden bloggers’ bloom day

Apart from lichen and rust which I think look lovely in the spring sunlight …

….. we have apricot blossom just about to come out (several weeks late this year) …

…..one lone daffodil and one rather battered-looking anemone (also very late, although one anemone made the mistake of flowering in November!) …..

…. our neighbour’s almond blossom (cheating a bit, but we can see it over the fence) and the rosemary which has been flowering all winter, even when it was very cold….

That’s it for the flowers, but we’re still harvesting cabbages, salad leaves (lettuce, lamb’s lettuce and sorrel), as well as herbs (thyme, sage, rosemary, bay).

Garden bloggers’ bloom day is hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

Second anniversary

It’s two years this weekend since I started this blog. As I said last year, on the first anniversary, we’ve learnt a lot from becoming part of the community of gardening bloggers and have made many friends and even met some of them – Ian at Kitchen Garden in France and Kate at Hills and Plains Seedsavers and Vegetable Vagabond in Australia, who have both visited us here and who invited us to join their Kitchen Garden International weekend last September in south-western France. We’ve exchanged seeds with Ian and Kate and also with Laura at Mas du Diable, quite near us in the Cévennes, and with Michelle at From Seed to Table in California, where the climate is also Mediterranean. The blogs I read and from which I get enjoyment and inspiration are listed in the side bar, and there too many to mention here, but two which I read most often because they are by fellow Mediterranean gardeners, in a similar climate to ours, are Jan’s in Catalunya and Heiko’s in Italy. So, as well as our gardening neighbours here in Gabian who are a wonderful source of useful advice, we are benefiting from the knowledge and experience of gardeners and cooks all over the world. Thank you all!

Mid-February in the garden

It’s a quiet time in the garden, a time for planning the next year, but not for harvesting very much. Apart from herbs – thyme, rosemary, mint and bay especially – which we use daily, we’re picking only leeks and cabbages at the moment, with the chard and lettuces just recovering from the cold weather we’ve had.

It seems to be a late spring – there is no sign yet of almond or apricot blossom and their buds are only just beginning to swell.

Left, the still-bare branches of our apricot tree, and above, canes and flower of bamboo, battered by the north wind, but beautiful against the clear sky on a cold day.

After a cold walk back from the garden we warmed ourselves with a bowl of Lo Jardinièr’s flageolet bean and vegetable soup, with goats’ cheese and cured pork on toast and some red wine from Montesquieu.

Spring will come, though, and today we’ve sowed our tomato seeds and put them on the seed starter box which Lo Jardinièr made last year. We put the new mini-greenhouse on the balcony in the sun today to try it out and, although it was a cold day – about 6 degrees C – the temperature inside reached 22 degrees! So it will be good for the tomato and pepper plants once they germinate and before we take them to the garden to put in the more rustic-looking cold frames we have there.

What a difference a day makes ….

Yesterday it rained for twenty-four hours:

I can see this chimney from our top-floor window and it tells me whether or not there will be rain – if the wind is coming from the south the clouds come over the sea and we usually have rain, although not always as heavy as this. If the wind comes from the north, the smoke is blown the other way and we have dry weather because the rain from any clouds which do appear has already fallen in the mountains inland.

Today was almost spring-like, with warm sunshine and a north wind silvering the leaves of the olive trees at the edge of this vineyard at the top of the hill above our garden:

In the garden most of the plants had survived the cold nights well:

Spanish habas (left), 2nd sowing of broad beans (far left) and first sowing of broad beans above.

Cabbages

This almond tree looks a lot better against a blue sky, rather than last week’s grey one, even though it won’t have blossom for another couple of weeks. First signs of spring: a mimosa tree in a sheltered garden in the village has yellow flower buds about to open. The almond blossom usually follows very soon afterwards.

Haiti earthquake

The catastrophic events in Haiti have been on my mind for the past few days – how can one small country have to put up with so many disasters and problems? There seems so little that individuals can do but we can donate towards the aid effort at the websites of the British Red Cross, the American Red Cross or the French organisation Action Contre la Faim.

After a storm

In the garden today …

a raindrop caught in a passiflora tendril …

a mantis crawling among the weeds, …

and the sun trying to come through the clouds and our neighbour’s almond tree.

We planted out cabbage and lettuce and harvested more late tomatoes, some red and some still green.  It will be time to clear all the tomato plants soon but there is still a chance some more will ripen if we get sunshine next week, as forecast.

First anniversary / Premier anniversaire

It's a year since I began the Olives and Artichokes blog at the start of the last gardening year.  One of my earliest posts was about planting our potatoes on the day after the full moon in February 2008.  Yesterday we did just that, again ... the cycle of the seasons and the gardening year.

In my first post I hoped that the blog would be 'a diary of what we learn'.  Well, it has become that, and a lot more too.  Writing the blog has been more involving - and taken more time - than I'd thought, but it has also brought unexpected rewards.  I've become part of a worldwide community of gardeners and like-minded people.  I've made friends, some of whom I've met, some of whom are still 'virtual' friends but no less real when it comes to exchanging ideas and advice.

Perhaps most importantly, writing the blog has encouraged me to think more about gardening, food and the environment.  Lo Jardinièr and I are still gardening for the same reasons as we always have done - because we enjoy it, because we like good food and because we believe that local, organic food is better for us and better for the planet.  But now we think through the issues and arguments more and we're part of a 'conversation' that circles the world.

We're looking forward to the next year of Olives and Artichokes and we hope that all our new and old friends around the world will continue to enjoy reading about our garden and food adventures as much as we enjoy learning about yours.

C'est le premier anniversaire du blog Olives and Artichokes et nous espérons que nos amis et nos lecteurs autour du monde continuent de apprécier l'histoire de notre jardin et notre cuisne autant que nous appécions les vôtres.

PS  Looking back at last February's posts shows how comparatively cold this year has been and how late this spring is.  On 17 February I posted photos of almond blossom and apricot buds which were about to flower - there's nothing like that yet this year.

Cold wet garden, tapas at home for my 100th post / Un jardin froid et les tapas chez nous

For nearly a week we've had grey skies. Today it's raining and sleeting. Usually here it's cold, but clear and bright at this time of the year. We haven't been able to do any work in the garden, although we did manage our traditional aperitif in the garden on Christmas day, with a brief moment of sunshine.

Pour presqu'une semaine il a fait gris. Aujourd'hui il pleut et un peu de neige fondue tombe de temps en temps. Comme d'habitude ici à cette saison il fait froid, mais clair. Nous n'avons pas pu faire aucun travail au jardin, mais on a pris l'apéritif au jardin le jour de Noel, pendant un petit moment de soleil.

It's strange to see olive leaves covered in rain / c'est bizzare de voir les feuilles d'olivier couvertes de pluie.

Yesterday we went to Grau d'Agde and the sea was grey and rough. / Hier on est allé au Grau d'Agde et la mer était gris et agitée.

Not the usual view of the Mediterranean!

At home in the evening we cheered ourselves up with a meal of tapas and North African pastries: / Chez nous le soir on s'est remonté le moral avec un repas de tapas et de patisseries maghrébines:

sheep's cheese and anchovies	cured ham and artichoke hearts
Spanish red peppers stuffed with potato and salt cod	Almond, apricot, fig and walnut pastries.

November harvest / moisson de novembre

It's been so cold and wet this week that it's been hard to believe it is still autumn and not winter. We're still picking tomatoes - about 5 kilos this week - but it feels like time for winter vegetables now.

rainbow chard and some earthy leeks

Il a fait froid cette semaine et on ne peut pas croire que c'est toujours l'automne. On continue de ramasser des tomates - 5 kilos cette semaine - mais ça semble comme le temps pour les légumes d'hiver.

I made soup with the leeks, an onion and a couple of potatoes. / J'ai fait de la soupe de poireaux en ajoutant un oignon et deux pommes de terre.

Cave Coopérative La Carignano

Gabian is a wine-making village with its own special terroir and a couple of years ago the cave coopérative celebrated its seventieth anniversary. Now it seems that La Carignano will close at the end of the year. There are several independent wine-makers in the village, but it will be sad not to have the cooperative. We went there this morning and bought some white wine - Gabians - in bottles and a bag-in-box - and some almond syrup for adding to white wine to make kir. This syrup can also be used in desserts so I made trifle.

Almond and apricot trifles

In individual dishes I put some madeleines (or sponge fingers) and poured on a tablespoonful of almond syrup to each dish. I spread a spoonful of apricot jam over the madeleines and then topped each dish with mascarpone mixed with a tablespoonful of Armagnac (or you could use crème fraîche) and garnished them with toasted almonds.

We don't eat desserts very often, but these will be a weekend treat when we have friends to supper this evening.

Olive harvest

In all the olive groves, along roads, in gardens and on roundabouts in villages and towns, the olives are ripening now. The olives in this picture are on one of the trees at Roquessels which I photographed for my post in June when they were in flower. Soon the olive oil producers will take their harvest to the mills. It seems a good time to write about the olive tree and its importance to the countries around the Mediterranean. And it's obviously of interest to this blog. So over the next week or so I'm planning a series of posts about this vital tree and its history.

Signs of spring?

Almond blossom, and . . .

our apricot tree about to burst into blossom.