Author: Heather Robinson

Le tonnerre – thunder – is rumbling heavily, fast approaching. It is as if someone is rolling around bones above or moving a grand piano from one celestial room to another. It can happen sometimes with the heat in Provence where the pressure will build until loose, messy storms break out. They are predicted for today, have been predicted since morning actually but it was only a little while ago that I picked my head up from an article I am working on to notice that the sky had darkened and the swallows were swooping extra low. So I fed the dogs early and took them out just in case. My espadrilles are broken in to the point of being broken and so I have to pick myself carefully along the rock-strewn path. Sapphire-bodied dragonflies hovered like drones over powderpuff clover, wings beating so fast as to be invisible. I closed my eyes for just a moment to feel the breeze skimming across the beads of perspiration on my forehead but then another boom rang out, closer, and Ben, my sweetest Golden, looked at me with eyes shining in panic so we stepped up the pace home.

Despite the heat, I had stepped back on the yoga mat this morning. Just pointing my red-tipped toes towards it and then placing one foot then the next was like slipping into a pool. It is familiar. Somewhere – I think it is my Sister who has it – there is a beaten up, faded photograph of my Mom giving yoga lessons on the front lawn. Robin, my Sister, is doing a pretty good copy of my Mom’s pose but me, the littlest and probably only five at the time was doing something entirely of my own make. I might have added this into my memory but I seem to recall me giggling at how funny I was being. Today I told myself to go slowly, which felt appropriate as if I was parting the thickness of the air with my arms and legs and breath. For you see, it had been quite a while. And this for an act which does me a world of good, one that I usually say strips me down to the best of myself.

Age is not something that I tend to concern myself with much. But lately, my body has been telling me that maybe, just maybe, I need to be a tiny more specific. I am not the only one. My friend DA has written a really excellent piece for the Huffington Post that circles around and pin-pointing some of the same ideas that have been ringing in my head as evasively as the thunder. To me that is some of what the best of this odd internet world can do – a little lineup of gentle pinpricks of thought or ideas – that can help even the most heat-addled of us play connect the dots. So I stepped back on the mat. 

Despite the house shutters clanking and the olive tree branches swaying like the sea below my window, I think that the storm has passed us by. I have been sitting next to Ben in the shower of the guest room – his fear fort – for the past fifteen minutes but something imperceptible shifted in the air so I got up to see. The sky is a soft orange in the distance – but in the opposite direction now. Maybe the heat lightning is cracking its whip over there, so quick and passing but I wonder if it is waking something up in someone else’s heart as well.

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

– Henry David Thoreau

The light was already slicing hot as I turned towards home this morning after walking the dogs. It popped up surfaces in ways that made everything that I was gazing at look as if it had been written in braille. After closing the shutters tight to keep the prying fingers of the sun out of the rooms that had cooled in the night, I put on my straw hat, grabbed my camera and headed back out to swim in the last of the morning, hunting for the traces trail.

Remi was at the garden, giving a talk sponsored by a community association in this tiny village for those interested in photography. I would have tagged along but for fear of making him feel self-conscious. He had already decided that his main goal would be to help people find a specific photo rather than just blindly grabbing at the whole. I suppose that was in my mind too as I darted between shady spots to look quietly and hopefully, start to see. For when I do, I stop thinking and start feeling without touching…the coarseness of the lime-wash and crumbling stone, the sweet kiss of les petales de roses…In the 95° heat, I could almost hear their crackle and hiss, these things alive to me yet silent. How I am delighted with the treasures found in my texture hunt.

Bon Weekend tout le monde…and a heart-felt welcome to all of you that are new here!

Nostradamus did not only predict the end of the world. No, he also had a pif or a sixth sense for all things delectable and that certainly included using a touch of alchemy to create fruit confit, candied fruit. 

That same technique, one perfected by Olivier de Serres 400 years ago, has been used by five generations of the Lilamand family at their workshops in charming Saint Rémy de Provence since 1866.

It involves simmering a peeled piece of fruit in a bain or bath of sugar syrup repeatedly over a period of three to four weeks until that mixture has replaced the water in the fruit. Then it is left to rest for at least two months to complete the candying process. The result is truly spectacular. Miraculously, with each yielding bite, one tastes only the pure essence of the fruit itself – and this comes from someone who can’t stand sugary sweets!

But fruit confit? Most certainly – especially after it has been taken through the final step of glaçage – a skillful icing that almost makes the fruit look as if it has just been picked. Yes, your fingers will be just ever so slightly sticky afterwards, but it will be worth it. And I especially love that all of the fruit used is local and some – such as the tangy cédrat – are exemplary of the unique offerings in Provence.

These photos were admittedly taken in haste and don’t begin to show the beauty of what Lilamand Confiseur does – think edible jewels. In their elegant boutique, they offer quite a range of products (that also make perfect gifts) from exotic platters costing several hundred Euros (such craftsmanship does not come cheap nor should it), to tasting boxes starting at 15 Euros and a selection of “seconds” that are perfect for baking. In the past few years, the company has also started baking their own calissons (and they are delicious, take that Aix-en-Provence), jams and fruit syrups. 

While there is an excellent on-line boutique, I specifically wanted to mention this company for those of you who will be visiting Provence this summer so that you can go and visit for yourselves. Annabelle welcomed us warmly (yes, she speaks English) and was patient in explaining the process involved, making this exquisite delicacy quite approachable. While I tend to associate Nostradamus with doom and gloom, I certainly am sending a merci back through the centuries for his forecasting the success of fruit confit…quite a discovery.

Confiserie Lilamand

5 avenue Albert Schweitzer

13210 – Saint Rémy de Provence

Tel.: +33 (0)4 90 92 11 08

And for my many antiques loving friends,

13 Rue de la République

84800 – L’Isle sur la Sorgue

Tel. +33 (0)4 90 92 13 45

Both boutiques are closed on Monday.

For more information, click here.

And to visit their online shop, click here.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone. May wonderful things bloom for you…

PS. I hope that those of you who left comments on my previous post will pardon my not responding individually as I usually do. The Mistral winds finally stopped after 16 days straight – sixteen days of howling winds! In May! Unheard of! – and so I have been lured away from the computer screen to play outside once again. My head still feels as though it is comprised of a big bag of rolling marbles!

Apparently, quite slowly. But surely too – of that I am certain. For already, these photos that were taken last week are sadly outdated. I am now waiting for the fireworks, holding my breath for the first boom.

For you see we first were able to rent our little plot of land – I would say that it is roughly four to five yards wide and maybe ten deep – last November. Yes, that is a long time to wait. But it will be worth it.

There is an association in our tiny village that is something of a gardener’s club. For only 20€ a year (or $22 USD, my that is a good exchange rate), we are able to grow…what we like. 

The previous renters squatted on their rights for too long. The land hadn’t been tilled in years and so they were given the boot. But oh, what work that meant for us…

First, we had to see if there was anything to save, such as these wild strawberries…

…which we were told would produce nothing this year as we had moved them (let’s hear a hooray for our few tiny survivors)…

…along with what is a heart-shaped beating red carnation now that it has been weeded…

…as well as various mystery plants that we have no clue what they are but have left as they are pretty.

Because here is the thing: we have no idea what we are doing. None.

And yet…and yet, already there are beginnings of something promising…

Now, we can’t take credit as Remi and I have been utterly taken under the wings of all of the most experienced gardeners. I suppose they give us something like sweet pity as former city-folk, one of whom is an americaine to boot!

And in meeting them, I have found such generosity that it makes my heart bloom every single time with  gratitude. I will tell you more about these characters (for they really are) in time.

So what have we planted? I know that some of you are already tapping your feet with impatience by this point. Oh – and I should add that after prepping the earth and covering it with a healthy dose of horse manure (which has to be at least six months old, we were told and that makes sense – fortunately, there are plenty of horses in these parts), we let it sleep the winter out. Now, it is ready to welcome…

…22 tomato plants (most of which are heirloom varietals and were a welcome gift, including the delicious “black” tomato from Crimea), a massive amount of potatoes (put in the back plot as suggested to “clean out the earth and keep the moles away”), purple and white eggplants, three kinds of salad, cucumbers (that we mistakenly planted near the tomatoes, our one big mistake, so we shall see), red peppers, zucchini (currently in flower!) as well as the afore-mentioned transplanted fraises. 

There were also already in place both thyme and rosemary bushes as well as two gigantic lavender plants that are oh-so-thankful that I pruned them back. Each night, I hold one of the blooms in my hand to see how the parfum is progressing. A bit of sweet nonsense that is everything. 

It is our little world, one where our outside thoughts can’t reach us as if the cane fences (that we cut down and Remi built) block out the non-essential. Right now I am going everyday to water and weed, especially as those Mistral winds are still blowing (it is all the talk in the local superette as to when they will cease, Thursday is the current prediction, fingers crossed) which dries out the land enormously. Growing in Provence has particular challenges into itself as I am learning. So at the end of the day after everyone else has already passed by, we head over and I begin by taking stock. “How does our garden grow?” I wonder. And filled with hope, I see.