Oysters, Ants, Pollen Clouds and Miniature Goats.

Along with hundreds of thousands of others, some neighbours here were stuck in Boston after the unpronounceable Icelandic volcano exploded into the skies, dusting European airspace with volcanic ash.

The day after French and other European and UK fights were grounded, I opened my door here in the forest to a haze of yellow dust. Just another natural phenomenon - the breeze blowing clouds of pollen from pine tree branches into the warm spring air. My blue car was yellow. My terrace was yellow. My Burmese/Siamese cat, Coco, was yellow. After a short walk in the garden my shoes and jeans were yellow. Last year there was a shower after the heaviest pollen clouds. Pollen lay everywhere like mustard for days.

It's also the time of year when ants get active. They come in three sizes: giant, middling and tiny. The big ones stay around dead trees in the forest. Don't know quite what the little ones get up to. It's the middle-sized ants, the carpenter ants, that are troublesome. They troop into the house, climbing the exterior wall and entering through any little opening and nest in the wooden beams. Bit by bit, they hollow out the beams, pushing wood dust out. They're eating my house. I like most creatures and generally go out of my way to avoid hurting them. But I have to make an exception with the ants. I buy that ant killer that says the ants find it irresistible and take it into the nest where they all have a good meal then die. It's utter rubbish. They make huge detours to avoid the stuff. I'm just 're-roofing' the frame over the terrace with mesh so I can plonk all the honeysuckle back over it and while I was up the ladder I saw legions of ants trundling over the frame, waving their antennae in greeting at one another, on their way to eat my beams. You can brush them off but they just start again at the bottom.

While I was up the ladder a neighbour arrived with his station wagon. "Viens voir" he said, calling me over.
In the back seat he had a miniature goat with miniature horns and a very sweet face.
"I know you like animals" he said. "So I thought I'd bring this one to show you. There were two, loose by the canal. The other one got away. I think they belong to Gregory, your neighbour."
No I said. Gregory has sheep and donkeys and geese and hens and cats and dogs and children. But no goats.

We looked at the goat in the back seat. He looked back at us. Since he wasn't the slightest bit scared I suddenly thought he must live at the pony school. The pony school along the track has a bunch of tiny ponies ridden by tiny riders, all little girls who love ponies. Every day they ride past the house on the track, led by an older girl or a big bloke on a more substantial horse. Maybe the school also kept goats. That would explain why the goat was used to humans.

My neighbour duly drove the goat to the pony school. No, not ours, they said. But we'll keep him till you find the owners.
Asking around, another neighbour, Daniel, did indeed know who owned the two goats. My neighbour called round and told the family 'I found one of your goats.'
They were delighted, a couple and a troop of young kids. (Not a pun.)
The goats were not tethered they explained. They just wander about all day and come home in the evening. This was the first time in six months that they'd wandered so far.
Everyone went to the school to collect the first goat.
The second arrived at my neighbour's house later that day, perhaps scenting that her partner had already turned himself in.
Goats and family were reunited.

Once that was all dealt with I turned my attention to the oyster shells. I'd invited friends to eat oysters at my place the previous night as the guy who sells oysters in the local market sells the world's best oysters. From Bouzigues, he's a young guy, clearly very proud of his work and the quality of his oysters. Last week I told him I'd found a small blue pearl in one of the oysters I'd bought from him and he explained that yes that can happen but it's rare. Also, because the oysters are young, the pearls are soft and not mature. That had been obvious as the outer layers crumbled easiy. Still, it was the first time I'd found a pearl in my dinner.
Anyhow, I had dozens of oyster shells. More than I'd paid for because oyster sellers work on the old 13 to a dozen principle. Looking at them, they were so beautiful I couldn't throw them away. Maybe they'd make good compost? Looking online it seemed that they do indeed make good compost. I was about to start hammering them to smithereens when my neighbour called round again. He'd done a deal with the woman at the pony school, exchanging our collective olive oil for her horse manure mixed with straw. Did I want to be included so I could have fertiliser for my olive trees? Yes please.
"However" I said proudly "I'm also making oyster shell compost".
He looked at me as if I was mad.
"It's full of calcium" I said. "Very good for the soil."
He threw his head back and laughed.
Yes it's full of calcium he replied. But not good for your soil. Look around - your soil is calcaire - it's made of calcium."
OK. I'll stick with the horse manure.

Wild Asparagus and Morille Mushrooms

That time of year again. I love collecting the slim, slightly bitter wild asparagus spears that grow in Provence. You soon develop an eye for them, spotting the tangle of spiky, bottle-green asparagus plant and then, off to one side, an elegant spear. Takes time to find and collect them though so no wonder they only turn up occasionally in the local market and cost quite a bit.

They're lovely with a dorade royale, lightly steamed and with an olive oil vinaigrette. Even nicer that the spears come from the foot of the olives trees from which the oil is made. Wild asparagus is lovely cooked and cut into omelette too. Or fine, young spears can be added to green salad or a salade nicoise.

Because we've had quite a bit of rain this year, everything's growing as if it's in the tropics. And that includes....morilles - morel mushrooms. A wonderful truffly mushroom that pops up in spring, morels have been few and far between in the last few years just where I live. Usually I find a dozen or so growing in the gravel round the lavender and roses. This year, out looking for asparagus, I suddenly noticed they were popping up all over the place!

Which causes great excitement. (When I spotted the first one, a woodpecker suddenly started drilling away at a tree in the garden which seemed a bit like a morel fanfare given the timing.) My instinct was to fall on the mushrooms straight away and carry them off to the kitchen. But as almost always, with almost everything in Provence, the first thing to do was to try and apply some experienced judgement. They had some more growing to do. So why not wait till tomorrow or the day after? Good thinking. Or was it? Once dusk fell, the four sangliers wild boar that live long the track would be out truffling about looking for food. The morilles would be hoovered up in a second once they were scented. So pick them now.
Or not?

I picked several and cooked them with slices of duck. Delicious. (First it was necessary to be certain they were morilles but they're quite hard to mistake. There is a variety which is highly toxic - if eaten raw - but I was cooking them anyway.)

Since then I've picked around 15 large morels which were luckily not found by the sangliers. A friend who is an expert in mycology, and so also knows his mushroom gathering, identification, cuisine and preservation, reminded me that the flavour of morilles is improved by drying them. Hang them up with their chapeaux down, he said, and use natural twine, not thread or plasticky string.
So I'm starting to collect a few more each day and hang them upside down from the ramp in the mezzanine.

I mustn't forget the less rare but equally desirable asperges sauvages though. Better go out now and find some.


Two books on Provencal homes:

Provencal Escapes: Inspirational Homes in Provence and the Cote D'azur

Provencal Inspiration: Living the French Country Spirit

Buying Houses, Selling Houses, Renovating Houses in Provence

A new neighbour of mine was widowed last year. She left the beautiful villa in Narbonne which she'd shared with her husband and moved to Isle-sur-Sorgue. There were too many memories in the Narbonne house. (Which she's selling - if you're interested in a large, perfect, move-in-condition villa with a great pool and oodles of space, just ask.)

The first thing she did here was order a new kitchen. Heaven knows why - the 'old' one looked perfectly new. But people like to make a home their own. A local company agreed a (high) price with her and duly sent lots of crates and a fitter along. The kitchen would take two days to fit. Er, not quite. The guy was meticulous when he worked but had various other claims on his time so that the two days slid into...12. Twelve days without one or other or several of the appliances and sometimes without water. Oh well, it got done.

My neighbour then decided to build a large wall round the property. To my mind this is a fairly frequently-seen anglo-saxon priority and privacy could often be protected more aesthetically with hedging or shrubs. But beauty's in the eye of the person holding the deeds to the house. She duly engaged a team to build a wall and agreed a (high) price. "How's the wall progressing?" I asked her after a while. "OK" she said slowly. "Though the builders don't always turn up when they say they will. They seem to have other claims on their time."

Next day they were happily back to work though. Part of the wall was to block out a neighbour's garden where a large stately white horse had got used to gazing into her garden, pensively chewing grass. He watched the builders mixing concrete with a certain amount of interest. But looked affronted as they plonked blocks one on top of the other, gradually phasing him out of view. Walled up in his own garden, poor thing. He was accompanied by a barky dog though, whose barks were not blocked out by the wall so I imagine he and the horse felt they'd had a partial victory.

New kitchen and large wall in progress, my neighbour then decided to replace all the house's (new) interior doors with (new) new doors. And the frames they hung in. I spoke with a local craftsman who does patines for doors - (what's the word in English? Finishes?) Could he supply doors and frames? No. Did he know anyone who could? Probably. What about price? He didn't know. Probably high? Probably.

And then she turned her attention to the lawn. Her gardener is pretty good at what he does but, like the kitchen fitter, he has various other interests and things to do with his time apart from prune trees and plant lavender bushes. So my neighbour decided she should at least buy a lawn mower - one she could use so she could mow the grass when the gardener's not available. Which meant a ride-on mower as she's quite small and the lawn is quite big. Looking at prices on line, she saw they were rather high in Provence so she's ordered a John Deere tractor-like lawn mower to be delivered from the UK.

Generally I must say I find prices in Provence wa-y lower than UK prices. For almost everything. (Except, curiously, knickers.) I have a feeling that delivering a tractor-style John Deere lawn mower from Britain may turn out to be quite a performance and possibly one of the most expensive home improvements my neighbour makes. But perhaps it'll arrive on time. We'll see.

For a useful Provence and French Riviera Guide see: Rick Steves' Provence and The French Riviera 2010

Pruning the olive trees, 2010.

2009/2010 was a horrible winter here in Provence. Long, dull, exceptionally cold and rainy. The light, sunny days were very few and everyone seemed to be in low spirits.

It wasn't till the end of March that we started to see a bit more light and even then it was far from warm. We started to prune the oliviers round here on the 29th of March.

My neighbours were busy from morning till night with hundreds of mature olive trees that needed detailed attention.

My own oliviers are a mix of trees which emerged slowly from the ruins of trees killed by the long hard frost in 1956, and new young trees I planted in 2006. The younger and older trees need to be pruned differently. For the more established, taller trees I cut away suckers from aournd the roots to favour the three or four main charpentes and then used secateurs to remove branches growing into 'the middle' of each tree. Thinning and opening the olivier out in this way lets the sun in and olive trees love the sun. I also removed the few small branches with diseased leaves on them and little dry twigs that were dead.

For the younger, smaller trees, the first thing to do was to stand back and look at each one. Then you circle it; again, just looking. Once you've taken in the shape and balance of the tree you look into the middle and remove any superfluous charpentes, cutting at the centre where the branch begins. You should leave three or four charpentes. These will forever form the tree's basic framework. You then remove any branches which are trailing on or too near the ground and branches which cross others within the tree's centre.

Grass and weeds need to be cleared away from around the base of each olivier. The space cleared can be as wide or a little wider than a young tree. I'll put a mix of horse manure and straw down soon. This comes from a friend of a friend who keeps horses. It is entirely natural, without the weird industrial chemicals that go into commercial fertilisers. The horses graze on healthy, untreated grass in a rural area without crops nearby - no chemicals are sprayed around them. The animals aren't treated with anti-biotics. I don't treat the trees either so the olives and the eventual olive oil are pure and simple - non-traitéé.

The other task is to gather up all the pruned twigs and branches and burn them. That needs caution in this forested area. The pompiers quite rightly enforce the periods when you can't burn anything in the open.

And after that the trees need 40 litres of water each, twice monthly. That's usually provided by a mix of me dragging the extended hose up to the trees and the spectacular summer thunderstorms which often save me the hassle.

Using banks and banking in France (Can be a Hassle)

This account may just be personal experience but numbers of French and other friends recount similar experiences.

When I moved to France some years ago I chose my bank because it was housed in the prettiest building in town. How pleasant to go there once or twice a month. I don't suppose the other banks are much better in terms of service but they're in unattractive modern buildings.

The first thing I noticed is that when you ask the cash machine for a balance it prints out a ticket on which the most recent data is several days old. Not much use when you want to know if there are enough funds in the account to pay your mortgage and electricity bill tomorrow.

If you go into the bank to speak to a cashier, here's what happens. You do the usual thing of going through the two anti-bank raid doors, pressing the little buttons to get through each one. You stand in a long queue in front of a desk with three chairs for bank cashiers but only - ever - one cashier. Everyone in front of you pulls a huge dossier out of their bag when their turn comes to speak with the cashier and starts rifling through dozens of pages. You eye the clock and see it's nearly midday. Eventually you get to speak to the cashier and she advises you that, for a balance, you have to go to the cash machine.

In general, there doesn't seem to be anyone in the branch who can tell you much about activity on your account. The other day I asked if Peugeot have cancelled the direct debit I was paying for a car lease. The cashier said the system doesn't show her that. So what should I do? They have to cancel it apparently, not me. "Oh" she said breezily "wait till next month, then if they take money for a car you don't have any more, go and see them and ask them to cancel the debit." Er, OK. It could be more organised than that though couldn't it?

Putting money in the account can be as frustrating as finding out what's in there or finding out what's going out. My local branch doesn't have a cash 'depot' facility but a branch twelve kilometres away does. So I drive over there and pay cash in. You get fairly used to doing that and you get to trust the system. Wrongly. One Sunday evening I went to pay cash in to cover a direct debit on the Tuesday morning. The facility wasn't available. Depot just wasn't there as an option on the menu that day. The next day was Monday - the bank was closed, so the bill went unpaid and I got debited for the bank's work of not paying.

A few weeks late I resumed paying depots to the account as depot had reappeared on the menu. Again, I paid money in to cover the mortgage and a bill. A message appeared on the screen saying in French: "Following an incident we couldn't count your money." Occasionally when that happens, the notes pop out of the machine, but this time they stayed in it. Then the screen reverted to the other options - 'obtain a balance' and so on. My euros had been swallowed up and I had no evidence I'd paid them in. I spoke to the surveillance camera for a moment. Waved my arms around a bit. Then went home.

The next day I went to see the manager of my own branch who didn't seem to know customers could make a depot at the other branch. He was fascinated by my account of losing my money. I asked him what would happen now? "Oh" he said breezily "someone will count the money and realise there's too much and we'll sort it out." Ahah. OK. Any idea who? Or when?
He sucked in his breath. Hard to say really.
Well, who collects the cash? How often?
Um, not bank staff. Some sub-contractors. About once a week, he thought.
What's to stop them putting my euros in their pocket?
He laughed. No, they wouldn't do that. No no.
He'd make enquiries and call me to let me know when the problem was rectified.

Well he never did. Ten days later I went back to the branch, passed through the anti-bank raid doors, stood in a long queue, watched as each customer hauled a huge dossier out of their bag when they reached the cashier, looked at the clock as it got near to midday, and finally reached the cashier. I explained the history of the problem. I'd lost hundreds of euros; I'd spoken to the bank manager. (I had a medium-sized dossier myself now.) And she said breezily "Oh, you need to go to the cash machine for a balance."
"But can't you look at the system and see what's happening on the account?"
Charming smile and a further calm encouragement to go to the cash machine.
"Go and have a look" she said. "I expect it'll be all right."

So I went to have a look and, this being France, it was.

Snow in March. In Provence.

Last week, at the start of March 2010, I lay out for a couple of hours on the bain de soleil warming myself for the first time after a long cold winter. Everyone round here agrees that France had its coldest winter for decades in 2009. Finally the sun seemed to be making a comeback.

Till the 7th of March. And then, wham, a thick rug of snow hit rapidly in the afternoon, turning my car into something that looked like an igloo and the logpile into a huge snow-hump. This was not the last gentle snow shower of the year - it was a serious, unwelcome return to winter.

I visited a friend in St Remy last week, who has hundreds of olive trees on her land right at the foot of the Alpilles. When I arrived I immediately noticed branches lying beside all the trees and wondered why she'd had them pruned at the start of March instead of later in the spring as usual. "They haven't been pruned" she said. "It's all snow damage." They had 40 centimetres of snow in and around Les Baux and St Remy not long before and the branches simply broke under the weight.

I went out this morning into ankle deep snow and looked at the land. Already the thaw had begun. Large chunks of snow were thudding to the ground from the roof and the pine trees. There were deer tracks in the snow bordering the forest. A guy from the village went by on his lovely black horse, bareback. The forest was silent apart from the occasional whooshing of snow falling. The small songbirds which have arrived in recent weeks are not singing, huddled presumably in snowy nests.

The snow's a bit of a pain for the flowers and buds that were coming out. It'll hang around for a day or two. But it's also beautiful and all the more so because it's relatively rare. I just hope it hasn't destroyed the first tender shoots of asperge sauvage which should be making their appearance any time soon.

Pruning and Training Systems for Modern Olive Growing

A Taste of Provence

Holiday Walks in Provence

A Must See Exhibition in Arles: "Cesar, Le Rhone Pour Memoire"

Even if you're nowhere near Arles - make a point of getting there to see this exceptional exhibition. It's on almost all year (till 19th September) and is fantastic.

A marble bust of Caesar, made in his lifetime, is the centrepiece of around 700 Roman artefacts objects pulled out of the Rhone (and the Mediterranean) by the lovely old city of Arles during 20 long years of underwater excavations. Imagine working in the murky waters of the Rhone, oxygen tanks and flippers on, spotting Roman remains in the weed and the gloom. Here a statue of Neptune, there a bust of Caesar.

That's what I call having a job...

During the long underwater dig, the archaeologists worked in some pretty testing conditions in the wide, fast-flowing river and the coastal waters of the Bouches-du-Rhone. The exhibition has several short films showing these expert divers at work as they find, clean, lift and record these priceless works. (Interested in archaeology?: The World Encyclopedia of Archaeology: The World's Most Significant Sites and Cultural Treasures )

It was in 2007, when the divers were getting ready to stop the excavations, that they spotted a number of stone fragments. They turned out to be a cache of Roman stones from friezes and mausoleums. As the find was examined, the dirty, stained marble bust of Caesar was identified and is without doubt the main treasure hauled out of the Rhone to date. (For more on Caesar,click here Caesar: Life of a Colossus .)

Identified, dated, cleaned and carefully restored by archaeological experts, the work is in amazingly good condition, with just a little cut on the nose.

Exhibition designer, Pierre Berthier, has produced a really spectacular display showing the process of discovery and recovery as well as the works themselves. The restoration work, and the task of confirming that the bust really is of Caesar were filmed so that visitors to the museum can see it being de-silted, cleaned, dated and then analysed to match its lines and proportions with an already-identified bust of Caesar kept in Italy.

The exhibition, seen along with the museum’s tremendous permanent collection, vividly shows how Rome’s wealth and power was felt in ancient Arles. Arles in antiquity was a crucial staging post in the movement of goods in the Roman empire. Its busy port saw cargo arriving from and setting off to points all over Europe, Africa and the Orient: The Roman Remains of Southern France: A Guide Book

The Rhone excavations came up with the remains of fifteen shipwrecks, including fine jewellery, hardy kitchen utensils, weighing scales, tools, iron and lead ingots, shoes, little toys and statuettes. Dozens of huge stone amphorae once contained wine, oil and fish sauce. Heavy stone sarcophagi were found along with a great statue of Neptune and a tethered male slave.

But the focal point is undoubtedly Caesar. Standing in a dimly-lit room, rescued from the dark currents, silt and weed of the river, it projects a spine-tingling sense of antiquity. His face is somehow very contemporary. Its features are strong and well-defined; the expression is grave.

Experts believe it was sculpted from life in 46BC, which means it reflects Caesar’s standing and power just two years before he was killed.

This wonderful exhibition runs until September 2010 and then the exhibits will become part of the museum’s permanent collection.

Luc Long, head of archaeological, subaquatic and deep sea research in France, is the exhibition's organiser. He says: "We made new and very beautiful discoveries in 2009 which leave us thinking that we haven’t come to the end of the reserves that this great natural museum - the Rhone river - still holds".

Which means we may get to see other exceptional exhibitions in this fine Provencal museum in the not-too-distant future.

Click here for details of opening hours and access to the Musee Departemental Arles Antique.

For more detail on Arles click here.