A festive demonstration

On Saturday we went to Carcassonne for the Anem Oc! demonstration in support of the Occitan language and official recognition of the fact that it is spoken over the whole of southern France, into the alpine valleys of northern Italy and in the Val d’Aran in the Pyrenees, in Catalunya – the only place where it is an official language.  The atmosphere was lively, festive, noisy and fun and there were about 25,000 people on the march through the streets of Carcassonne and up to the Cité, the old medieval town.

	There was a wonderful mix of fun and politics – women on stilts, Occitan, Breton, Basque and Catalan flags, and banners demanding liberty for the language and an end to fascism.

There were traditional Occitan music groups who marched with us through the streets, the bangs of fire crackers and the cheerful shouts from the crowds of people of all ages from small children to young people to the middle aged and older.  It was an exciting and inspiring event.

It took several hours for the last of the demonstrators to reach the Cité.  There is a connection with the issues I usually write about on this blog, too. 

The movement for Occitan language and culture is connected closely with campaigns for the environment in this part of France, and this has been so ever since the early 1970s when there were protests against the proposed extension of a military base on the Larzac plateau.  These historic links were represented here by some demonstrators who carried flags depicting the cardabela, the carline thistle, symbol of the Larzac where it grows, and the present-day links were there too in the campaign literature of the Partit Oc (the Occitan Party) demanding the protection of the locally based agriculture and food of the region, as well as more Occitan schools and a better TV service.

There are more photos on Flickr: here.

Back home in the garden we found that the plants had benefited from the heavy rain we had last week and now the warm sun has returned to bring the second spring we usually have at this time of the year.  We’ve sown broad beans, Spanish habas and peas, and planted cabbages, lettuces and cauliflowers which are all settling in well.  And the warm weather has brought out more late blooms, including these passiflora flowers.

After the storm / après la tempête

The storm which rushed across southern France and northern Spain, from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, yesterday was the worst for ten years, with winds of up to 150 kilometres per hour. We were warned to stay indoors and high-sided vehicles were forbidden from using the roads. Sadly, at least 15 people were killed during the storm, by falling trees and buildings, including four children in the Catalan town of Sant Boi Llobregat.

La tempête qui a fait rage à travers le sud de la France et le nord de l'Espagne, de l'Atlantique à la Mediterrannée. hier éatit la plus forte pour dix ans, avec des rafales de vent de 150 kilometre par heure. On nous a conseillé de rester chez nous et les grands camions étaient interdits sur les routes. Malheureusement, au moins 15 personnes ont étés tuées pendant la tempête, y compris quatre enfants à Sant Boi Llobregat en Catalogne.

Although Gabian was only just outside the red alert zone, we were lucky here and suffered little damage. When we went to the garden this morning we were surprised to find it just as we left it before the storm. It was a beautiful, calm, clear day - hard to believe what the weather had been like only 24 hours earlier!

Bien que Gabian soit juste dehors du zone d'alerte rouge, on avait de la chance ici, et il y avait peu de dommage. Quand nous sommes allées au jardin ce matin, nous étions étonnés de trouver tous comme avant la tempête.

The passion fruits were still ripening on our shelter. We had worried that this shelter might have been damaged by the wind, but luckily the whole garden is sheltered from the north and north-west (the direction of the storm) by trees and 4-metre high bamboo.

Some of the palm leaf fronds had been woven together by the wind:

The rosemary was flowering and we sat in the sun making plans for the coming seasons in the garden.

Le romarin fleurait et nous avons passé du temps assis au soleil en faisant des projets pour les saisons qui viennent.

Irrigation

We’ve had several days of very heavy rain and thunderstorms, there's been rain on the leaves of the plants on the windowsill ...

there's been rain in the gutters ...

and rain pouring off the roofs ...

so our concerns about keeping the garden well watered over the summer seem like a bit of a joke at the moment. But the hot dry weather will come and then the earth will need some help to conserve the water we give it, and we have to think about that now while we’re planting the beds.

When we were in southern Spain, from the train we saw whole fields of fruit trees and olive trees being flooded to water them, with a ridge of earth built up around the field to hold in the water until it had time to soak into the soil.

Our neighbours’ gardens here in Gabian have similar ridges and channels, around their tomato beds especially. Last year we were advised by one of them that we were not watering the plants properly – they should be planted in a dip and watered through this depression underneath the leaves. Tomato leaves, we found, do not react well to having drops of water on them – they get dead spots on the leaves where the water has touched them. Having grown tomatoes only in the greenhouse when we lived in Wales and England and used the ring system of watering into gravel beds beneath the pots, we didn’t realise this. Our tomato plants never had drops of water on them there!

And in the Orb valley recently we saw quite complicated patterns of irrigation channels formed around gardens to distribute water that was pumped up from the river.

A garden at Vieussan in the Orb valley.

In our garden we’ve been trying to recreate the watering ideas we’ve seen, although on a smaller scale. Last year we bought a watering kit – some metres of hosepipe, connections and small sprinklers to be inserted in the pipe in the right place for each of the plants. We tried out enough to water one bed of tomatoes – about a dozen plants – and it worked well, that bed produced our best tomatoes. The slow drip of water from the sprinkler soaks in more effectively than a spray from a hose, and it’s good to be able to sit with a drink enjoying the view of the garden while the tomatoes are being watered! So this year we’ve decided to extend this system so that it will now cover the cucumbers and haricot beans, which are in last year’s tomato bed, and one of the beds of tomatoes – with about 20 plants and the cherry tomatoes.

For the aubergines, peppers and courgettes we’ve made irrigation channels along the centre of the beds or radiating out from the centre. So far we’ve found these channels need a lot of attention to keep the water running freely through them to the end of the row, but we’re hoping it will get easier to manage.

keeping the water running to the pepper plants

getting water to four plants at once

And now the passion flowers are out

so, despite the rain, life is a bowl of cherries