Mazamet, March 7th, 2019
February in Mazamet has been like Spring. Lots of sun and beautifully mild temperatures hovering around 15 during the day, cooler nights. It’s been very enjoyable but of course something sticks in the back of the mind that this isn’t normal for this time of year. Despite a burst of cold here and there (during which I covered delicate plants with fabric) the polygala myrtifolia have flowered almost non-stop. All years before they had stopped flowering by mid November. Also, we only felt the need to turn the central heating on twice. Other than that it was just the little wood-burning stove we light in the evenings in the red room.
I wonder what this means in the context of the climate in general? Is the warming process actually happening faster than estimated?
In other news:
-The overweight mouse who lived in the greenhouse has died. Mike said that was a good thing because it was a rat – which is a rude thing to say. I saw the murder happen. It was quick. This is the murderer:
-Here at the house there’s work going on in the hallway ceiling at last. We couldn’t find appropriate scaffolding to rent in the area (+- 7 metres tall and slim enough to fit through the stairs) so in the end we had to buy a set from Italy. It’s fabulous and putting it together was fun.
-Mazamet has got a big new LIDL. This type of company does very careful market studies before projects like this. I remember they did the same in Sotogrande way back – and serious growth soon followed.
-Fibre has reached our area and gets installed here at the house today. We have decent internet so I’m not sure what sort of difference it’ll make.
-And also in Mazamet, if you want to buy olives, the best ones are at Provenc’halles, and the most interesting spice mix they have is called Kemia Orientale. The bucket is amazing value at €9.90
-My mood is surprisingly stable and my destructive thinking patterns are under control for the first time ever (in a prolonged sense.) It’s a lot of work to not let myself go down the dark paths, but I’m getting there. Let’s hope it gets easier with time.
Oh, I almost forgot. I got myself (because I’m worth it 🙂 ) a divine little Russian impressionist. The almond blossoms are so real, it’s amazing.
And I leave you with some pretty pictures:
My Mazamet 
I’m glad you’re well. And thanks for the laugh re: your resident murderer.
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I’m sure right at this moment Saudi embassies worldwide are preparing job proposals for him 😀
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I’m glad there are warm people somewhere in the world. Here, it’s been sub-zero temps for months and we’re getting more snow Sunday night. At least the time will have changed! (spring ahead). We’re looking forward to tapping trees/collecting sap (for maple syrup production) if it ever gets warm enough through the day.
Lovely to know that the foliage (and you) are blooming. 🙂
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Have you seen the maple syrup mafia documentary? I was
shocked.
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Never heard of it. .
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https://uproxx.com/tv/maple-syrup-heist-documentary-netflix-dirty-money/
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Ahhh. . .Netflix. I watch when I’m visiting our daughters. Thinking it might be something hubby and I might like (we’re not TV enthusiasts) I investigated the possibility. Alas, it turns out our TV is too old for the necessary hardware. . 😦
(We’ve owned 3 TV’s in 41 years)
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It’s crazy, isn’t it? Who would have thought. maple syrup?
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Well, organised crime isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of maple syrup, or Canada for that matter! 🙂
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I think there might be gold in the syrup, or something. That stuff’s expensive!
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My husband has been in Wisconsin for the last three weeks. It is rough up there! I don’t envy all that snow-shoveling at all. He called me Monday morning from outside where it was -27f. His remark was that we were never, ever, ever, ever, EVER moving to Wisconsin. lol
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Same weather here in Somerset (which is in England, off the Western edge of continental Europe), and it’s been T-shirts for most of February — not your fancy Balenciaga ones, mine are from Aldi (eight for a fiver).
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Are people worried? I know that for some crops it’s not good news.
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I think livestock farmers are happy, as the cattle and sheep aren’t trudging around in mud and needing hoof treatment as a consequence, though quite what it’ll mean for arable and Spring sowing I don’t know. Farmers always complain, in any case, and it seems Brexit is their main gripe currently. The rest of us are just thinking the same as you, that February felt for all the world like some time after Easter; and it’s been very odd in that there have even been large groups of sunbathers on the South Coast beaches.
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Sorry, that didn’t go in the right place (beneath your question).
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I was reading an article that said a change in timing can mean massive amounts of crops being lost because of having to reschedule picking and distribution when those things are usually precision timed and depend on networks.
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Bring back tinned fruit cocktail, I say!
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Climate certainly changing in Costa Rica…a dry season starting a month early and no rainy respite in January. Water table really down and the government finally goaded into drawing up plans to change the nature of agriculture to meet the problem…probably stay plans, but the big producers are worried and they hold the reins.
I see your Lord High Executioner wears an appropriately coloured jacket.
We could not hire appropriate scaffolding either when renovating the interiors, but our Turkish builder unearthed something that looks very similar to yours. lightweight and easy to assemble, from a mate he’d worked with on Batiments de France jobs. It was either that or more plank and ladder work….
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The scaffolding is one of our best purchases ever. After buying it we realised there was so much we could finally do without being perched on a ladder, or having to hire a cherry picker for the day (like trimming the wisteria). It’ll transform our lives.
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Yes, we wished we could have kept ours…we offered to buy it, but no way was he going to part with it.
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Love the painting. Love the warmth, too, though the locals with vineyards are worried that, like last year, we’ll have a late freeze and they’ll lose the crop. I’m worried that some years we’ll get the Arctic chill that plagued Chicago this year. You never know. For now, everything outside is green and happy. That pleases me.
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I meant to ask you the other day about that gorgeous blue vase with the daffodils…! Who’s it by?
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Hi. I’m so glad you like it. It’s not signed or anything. The SO inherited it from a woman who died about 40 years ago. It has just sat in a box since then. She shopped a lot at Bon Marché and may well have bought it there. So apart from it being good quality, I can’t tell you much about it. I wish I could, as I am now the happy owner of a few similar pieces.
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I love the ocean blues. They were extremely popular in France in the 19th century when some of the more daring ceramists started experimenting with old Chinese techniques. The glaze on your vase looks almost like granite. Very interesting.
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The Russian picture is utterly wonderful – the light, shadows, colours, puddle reflections and the almond blossom. And you DO deserve it. Besides, should there be any inkling of temperament slippage all you need do is sit in front of this lovely work and breathe -aaaaah! Chez Vous looks pretty stunning too. Fab scaffolding.
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The brushwork is absolutely extraordinary. Applied thick but with precision, in a very Van Gogh sort of way.
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It’s like a magic trick when artists pull this off, and you think: how did that happen? How did they know how perfect this would look from a distance?
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Sub
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Who’s that gorgeous dog?
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“My mood is surprisingly stable and my destructive thinking patterns are under control for the first time ever (in a prolonged sense.) It’s a lot of work to not let myself go down the dark paths, but I’m getting there.”
I LOVE THIS!
The weather has been uncharacteristically warm here, too, which has everything blooming. Until yesterday, when overnight temps hit freezing, which will likely kill all those beautiful blooms. 😦
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Thanks! It’s strange. I think I’d been tied to a sense (desire?) for a sort of “historical justice” – you know, to fix things that happened to me in the past. My mind was on a loop, reviewing and revising what should and could have been done differently. And also how I was probably to blame for anything bad that happened to me etc.
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I wouldn’t worry, we have all your cold weather. It was -20C yesterday and today a balmy -8C.
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Are you allowed to stay home every day? 😀
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Lovely, it won’t look like that here until May.
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That’s because Canada is still making When Calls the Heart – and while you do God will punish you with cold.
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Ha ha – well, Americans are working on it with Canadians. I guess they are punished with Trump.
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Yes, the increasing rate of change is even surprising the climatologists who study it.
Olives! Love ’em. Gotta have ’em. My Sicilian blood would stop flowing without olives!
Very beautiful pictures too!
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So if the rate if change is indeed increasing, what’s next?
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Nothing good, I’m afraid.
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Oh this was exactly the sort of delight in the day that I needed! Fat rats scaffolding olives and a Russian impressionist. One of a kind you are!
I bought myself a treat today too—a coppery patina metalwork. 😊
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😀
Copper metalwork for the kitchen? When we were planning the kitchen for a while I really wanted an old fashioned set-up with hanging copper pots – but in the end we decided an easy low maintenance kitchen was the better idea.
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No, it’s a wall hanging. That will actually hang right outside the kitchen. I love the patina on it, she does an epoxy finish over the metal, so lots of shine and movement. ❤️
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Yes, we’ve had rain rain and more rain for so long now it seems a dream. Laying weed matting down for pathways and demarcating garden beds rather than having them ramble everywhere is a new idea to control weeds and to have somewhat dry-ish ground on which to walk, wheelbarrow and maintain the beds. Consequently I gave myself a treat which was to buy more and different flowering things to add in, here and there. Working on a current load of chipped trees and shrubs for bed mulch and contemplating covering the weed matt pathways with gravel. Then again, doing so would still mean we have to gather up what falls from the trees, and we’d have soil again in no time. Strange, strange times on Planet Earth. Enjoy your creations, inside and out! And glad you’re feeling less morose these days. Aloha
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Are you always having to fight back nature? When I think of gardening in Hawaii, I imagine an untamed scenario, with native plants always trying to take over.
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Pretty much. Right now we are – that is, my garden helper and I – constructing pathways through the front garden with weed mat and stone bordered by edging, which defines the garden beds better. And then the beds get filled with a leaf/chip mulch which I’m hoping will keep the weeds back longer than the Mac nut husk, which turns to soil so quickly that the weeds love it as much as the plants. It’s an ongoing challenge. When it’s finished – and it’s nearing completion – I will probably post a photo of it amongst a couple of others like I am doing now with my posts. The guy who is bringing the gravel said the other day that it looks better than the old Rockefeller resort on the island 😉 Hey, I’ll take the compliment! ☺️
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Some geographical perspective… •Bordeaux, France; •Sevastopol, Crimea; •Southern Mongolia; •Northern Hokkaido, Japan, •Portland, Oregon, •Bozeman, Montana, •Halifax, Nova Scotia — are all approximately 45 degrees North.
It snowed here in Portland last night. You, in Mazamet, are just a few degrees south of that – and to have springtime conditions, now, is amazing. I’m envious.
Your idyllic setting looks to be an artist’s or writer’s paradise. When are you going to host an AirBnB? When I win the lottery, you’ll be my first stop!
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Yes, I think it’s a paradise for anyone who’s ready to step away from the rat race. You need to be able to sit and appreciate the green and the silence 🙂
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Mazamet looks lush and beautiful, Pinky. I do share you concerns about the weather though. I think climate change is causing the extremes to come more and more often. I wonder what will happen when they stop being extremes and become the new norm.
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Lidl hit the United States a few years ago and they’re growing like crazy, on the east coast. Not quite to the mountains yet, but I expect that in the next ten years.
And I love your impressionist. As I love the Impressionists generally.
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I love the thought of an overweight mouse living in your greenhouse, then being murdered!! It sounds as though you might be able to make an Agatha Christie like murder mystery out of it!! 🙂
Yikes, that Lidl store looks huge – is it in the same location as before?? And what is Aldi across the road going to do – follow suit??
My salvia ‘hot lips’ is flowering too – very strange weather indeed.
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The Aldi started it last year by completely refurbishing its pre-existing interiors. They didn’t grow, but it’s a whole new shop inside. The Lidl demolished the old shop and built the new one in that large plot which was on the left of the old parking lot. Meanwhile the Leclerc has created a huge solar panels station by covering its parking lot.
So we’ve got a bit of deja-vu having seen this exact same process happen where we lived in Spain 🙂
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