Vernal color.

Across the little valley from our house, this hillside doesn't exactly jump up and down and bugle Spring now, does it?  The early morning air's still crisp here, and the evenings no warmer for that enormous perigee moon we got to admire over the weekend. (Did you know we'll have to wait another 20-some years for another one like it?)

And yet, and yet.  That pale yellow in the foreground is actually brand-spanking new.  Closer to hand, the signs are everywhere.  Our Marans hen Blackie ended her dead-of-winter break from egg-laying yesterday with a pointy flourish.

The neighbor's ewes, fatly, exuberantly pregnant, are clearly enjoying the spate of bright and mild weather.  Another week or so and they'll be nuzzling knock-kneed sheeplets.

The goats have just had their babies (you can still see the remnant umbilical cord hanging from the one baby's belly).  My own babies got their turn at feeding; perhaps only in France does a runty goat kid get fed from a wine bottle...

My kids have been only too pleased to throw caution--and their coats--to the wind.  The garden is doing much the same. In the little orchard, one of the apple trees is already a-flutter with a million white blossoms. The lone, untamed forsythia, grape hyacinths, primroses, rosemary, and daffodils are open wide to the bright days and returning birds.  There's even a ground-hugging, pale blue haze in the fields, where the wild oregano and thyme're in full song. And this, here below, is the flowering quince--in bud a couple of weeks ago--now gone mad with color.    

Meanwhile, as clear as a bell tolling and in far more sustained tones, the violets have been signaling an end to winter's worst.  You can see thickly massed clusters of them across the fields and under the skeletal trees.  With two willing children and an open-ended Sunday morning (after the dew's dried and before high noon, to capture the most of their fugitive scent) you can pick and pick these little beauties--and still have more left to admire.  NB: I'm no expert, but I believe these are common wild violets, as opposed to sweet violets, which have a more floral fragrance.

If you can pick three full cups worth of these, you can make a delicately scented flower jelly with the wildest, most jewelly of colors.  Forget any unfortunate experience with violet-flavored food or drink you may have had. Almost without a doubt those were made using over-the-top synthetic violet flavoring.  Food--or kirs--flavored with real essence of violet shouldn't taste like you've eaten Grandma's guest soap.  Real violet tastes of something more primal, green, a something fleeting that somehow manages to linger evocatively on the tongue. 

As of this weekend, I've discovered that over a mascarpone-slathered slice of brioche toast, there's nothing finer than a dollop of this particular jelly. (In this season, anyway. Come summer, my vote's for little wild strawberries...) But whether you have it over a scone, a baguette, or challah bread, deepen the ethereal violet fragrance by drinking a violet-scented tea. I brought back a black tea from the Cha Yuan teashop in Lyon.  It is flavored with violets, roses, orange blossoms, and a touch of caramel, they named it 'Composition of the Sky' and it is Really Very Good.

After you or your children (yay, child labor!) have painstakingly gathered all those de-stemmed blossoms, you'll be a bit disappointed to watch them collapse to less than half their space under the steaming hot water.  Fret not, seal the pot: they give and give as they're steeped. By morning there's a murky, midnight blue water to be strained from the exhausted clump of flowers.

This liquid is blended with pectin and boiled just enough to ensure proper jelling--the flavor is too easily cooked away.  (I'd actually wanted to try this with a no-cook pectin, only I couldn't find any at my little supermarket.)  Likewise, go easy on lemon or citric acid, unless you want lemon jelly with a touch of violet. 

I'll admit, this is slightly finicky work, but you're repaid in spades: in the pan, that murky color magically changes with the addition of lemon/citric acid to something so splendid the sight alone makes it all worthwhile. 

And you, you get to taste the first jelly of spring. 

Gelée de violettes (Violet Jelly)

Makes about 4 small jars.

4 cups untreated, cleaned violet flowers, bitter stems removed
3 cups water
40 g pectin (I used Alsa Vitpris, a dry, no-sugar, pectin/citric acid blend*)
4 cups sugar
coffee filter

Heap violets in a mason jar. Bring 3 cups of water to a boil and pour over the flowers. Close the jar tightly and allow to steep at room temperature overnight or at least 10 hours.

The following day, sterilize four or five (to be safe) smaller glass jars and their lids in boiling water for ten to fifteen minutes in a large pasta pot.   Remove the pots and lids using tongs and allow them to dry upside-down on a fresh paper towel.

Strain infusion using a coffee filter (or a very fine strainer). Resist the impulse to press down on the violets, as this results in a cloudy jelly. In a very large saucepan, combine the violet infusion and pectin until very nearly dissolved.  Bring this mixture to a full boil. Add the 4 cups sugar. Stir and bring once again to a full rolling boil for one minute--not a second under, not too many over.  Undercooking will result in a runny jelly, while overcooking will destroy the delicate flavor of the violets.

Remove pan from heat. Thoroughly skim off the foam. Ladle jelly into the hot, sterile jars. Close lids tightly, turn upside-down and allow to cool fully at room temperature.

* If your pectin contains no citric acid, you'll need to add your own to help the jelly "set": a squeezed half-lemon should do.

Lemon springs eternal.

Remember last April, when my daughter and I were candying violets?  The violets are once again everywhere.  The garden doesn't keep a calendar, it feels what it feels, and right now, here, it's all about the warming touch of the sun and a breeze that could be described as nearly balmy.

Seems hardly believable to see the first signs of spring on the tail end of grim February, but the garden appears to be as ready for the close of winter as I am. The leaf buds, beginnings of flowers and general greenness are spreading like a virus.  (I myself have been coughing my way into my third week of a cold. Isn't it lovely how children share everything, even their school-incubated, upper respiratory messes?)

Even if I'm dragging, there is enormous solace in the bright light and lengthening days. I think our rabbit and chickens, who live outdoors, would absolutely agree.  As the hens are still laying, the kids collect three eggs a day, and I'm on permanent watch for good egg recipes. 

Unfortunately, there's otherwise nothing of great interest in my garden or at the farmer's market, if you don't count root vegetables. 

Except.  Nearly forgotten in my little orangeraie, the citrus trees have wintered, and they haven't been idle.  At this very moment, my Meyer lemon treelet is draped in sun-drenched fruit, as is my regular lemon tree. I also happened to have a couple of Bergamot oranges in the fruit bowl...

So here's my quantitative reasoning:
Eggs + lemons + almost spring-like weather = the perfect time to make lemon curd.

I wish I'd known to send a Valentine to David Lebovitz, blogging pastry chef and author extraordinaire.  He so deserves it. You see--thanks to observant reader Nadège--I tried his lemon bar recipe, and I just haven't been able to stop making it.  It involves using the entire lemon, rind and all, to get a lemon bar with a gorgeously complex, mouth-filling pucker and richness.  It is such an excellent way to make a lemon sing.  I've tweaked the recipe a bit: I brown the butter that goes in the crispy crust to really amplify its savor, and I've also upped the lemon factor.  I find one Bergamot orange and one standard lemon work best, though I received praise for the Meyer and regular lemon combo as well.  I know, a lemon bar isn't a traditionally French recipe per se, but really, it's just a "fun-size" tarte au citron, n'est-ce pas?

Just like my kids--and David--I like to share.  I'll keep my cold, but you can have the recipe.

Barres au citron (Lemon Bars, adapted from the recipe by David Lebovitz)

Makes one 20 cm/8 inch pan, or about 16 bars.

140g (1 cup) flour
50g (¼ cup) sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
115g (8 tablespoons) browned butter (a.k.a. beurre noisette)
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 lemons, organic (1 regular + 1 Bergamot/Meyer...)
200g (1 cup) sugar, superfine/castor *
4 ¼ teaspoons cornstarch
¼ teaspoon salt
45g (3 tablespoons) butter
3 large eggs, room temperature

Powdered/confectioner’s sugar

Begin by making the beurre noisette (the process is described here). Pour from pan into a small, pre-cooled dish and place in refrigerator to cool.

Preheat the oven to 180C (350F). As David recommends: “Overturn an 8-inch square pan on the counter and wrap the outside snugly with foil, shiny side up. Remove the foil, turn the pan over, and fit the foil into the pan, pressing to nudge the foil into the corners”. Set aside.

Combine the flour, 1/4 cup (50g) sugar, 1/4 teaspoon salt, vanilla and 8 tablespoons beurre noisette in a bowl, stirring until you have a smooth--if sticky--dough. Spread the dough evenly in the foil-lined pan, using your hands or a spatula, filling the corners thoroughly (and being careful not to rip the foil with your fingernail as I did the first time). Bake for 25 minutes, or until a deep-golden brown.

While the crust is baking, melt the 3 tablespoons of butter and set aside to cool. Cut one lemon in half, remove all the seeds, and cut the lemon into chunks. If using a Meyer lemons, note they have lots of teeny sliver-like seeds, be sure you've removed them all before dropping the pieces into the food processor. Juice the remaining lemon, and cut the remaining, empty rind into chunks. Put the chunks of lemon in a food processor along with the extra-fine sugar* and 3 tablespoons of lemon juice, and let the processor run until the lemon chunks are pretty tiny. Add the corn starch, salt, and 3 tablespoons (45g) melted butter, and blend until smooth. Lastly, add the 3 eggs and blend until just combined; try to avoid letting the mixture get too foamy.

Remove the crust from the oven once fully baked, reducing the heat of the oven to 150C (300F). Gently pour the lemon mixture over the hot crust and bake for 20-25 minutes or just until the filling is barely set (it should no longer jiggle when shaken). Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely. Place the pan in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to ensure that the curd is fully set. Lift the whole, baked lemon treat out of the pan by carefully pulling the foil. Cut the bars into squares or rectangles. Sift powdered sugar over the top just before serving.

These bars will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for three days.

* Make your own extrafine/castor sugar in seconds: just pulse regular sugar a few times in a food processor before adding the lemon chunks and juice.

Because I was told to.

I don't always do what I'm told to do. Indeed, I can be a bit of a contrarian. But tonight, in the steady, angled light of the setting sun, someone at my table said: "Now this is a recipe you should share." I thought about the dish. I thought about the crisp, bright springness, its aliveness in the mouth, its relative novelty, and just how blessedly easy it is to make. And I thought yes. It isn't Cevenol, mind you. It isn't even French (although I found it in last year in a magazine with a French name: Bon Appetit). The only thing I did to Maria Helm Sinskey's recipe was up the ante on the almonds and shallot. This is a good side dish paired with poultry or lamb chops, one that actually requires less than five minutes of cooking, maybe even less than four. It uses market-fresh ingredients that are available now. What are you waiting for? Jot down the ever-so-brief ingredient list.

And tell me: do you like it as much as we do?

Mangetouts à la minute (Snowpeas with Toasted Almonds)

Serves four.

2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup sliced almonds
250 g snow peas, trimmed and "de-stringed"
4 shallots, minced
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

Melt butter in medium skillet over medium heat. Add almonds and cook until golden and fragrant and butter begins to brown, stirring frequently, about one and a half minutes. Add snow peas and shallot; sauté until snow peas are crisp-tender, about 2 minutes (taste as you go!). Remove skillet from heat; add lemon juice. Season to taste with salt, toss and serve.

First flights.

The robin-egg blue sky reminds me. Late last spring, I found a bird in the courtyard, wobbling and flailing across the stones. Already in the preceding days, I'd found three different baby birds who'd tumbled to their deaths from their nests; at least this one was still alive. (Bird mamas have a tough decision to make: high enough to keep the chicks from the predators--or low enough to avoid fatal crashes. It's fly from the get-go or die.) For some types of birds, there's at least an entertaining practice period, when they spend a few days alternating between unsteady swoops through the courtyard, and resting in a sort of discreet way, behind a flower pot or on a low rafter.

After a breathless call to my friend the local bird expert, I knew to calm this apparently uninjured bird by placing him under an overturned pot for some dark and quiet. After he'd rested, I caught the non-flying fellow. Following my bird-loving friend's succinct advice, I took the birdlet to the terrace, and, heart in mouth, I threw him into the sky. He flew. Every cell in my body was cheering him on, and I squinted after him until he was a speck in the blue, until finally there was nothing but the memory of the scissoring wings in my hands.

This was before I acquired chickens. These days I candle eggs. In the pitch black of night, you take a bright flashlight out to the chicken house, where the broody hen's in a sort of chicken daze, all but cross-eyed with weariness sitting night and day on her eggs because she is absolutely compelled to. You slip an egg out from under her warm breast, you cup your hand around the egg, and you hold it against the light.

Remember the red semi-translucent glow your fingers would make when you held them up in front of a candle or a flashlight? (Was I the only one who tried to see through her fingers?) Candling eggs is like that. All those pin-prick holes in the egg--the ones the chick-to-be uses to breathe--they shine like stars in a pink firmament. You're staring into a glowing universe, condensed to the size of your palm, only you aren't seeking constellations, but rather the faint webwork of blood veins, which confirm that life is under construction, that this particular egg has indeed been fertilized.

Life is busting out all over, beyond the chicken house too. The neighbor's lambs are freshly born and capering, there's a tan calf resting in the clover of a nearby field, the woodpecker must be feeding a family (judging by the all-day percussion), the cuckoo is back and cuckooing, the swallows are chortling, the bumblebees are careening drunkenly from one source of nectar to the next. The frog mating chorus is in full nightly swing, augmented by the periodic sleepy whoot of the owls, while the fuzzy bats (no bigger than a tablespoon each) that live behind my window shutters have forsaken hibernation to resume their circular dining cruises through the deep, cool air.

Turning Japanese.

Remember that song by The Vapors? Turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese/I really think so--oh, admit it, it rings a bell--circa 1980. I've got it on a damaged cassette mix that I can't quite bring myself to throw away. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so does it make this gone and disappeared band feel better that Liz Phair featured it on an album, and that even Coldplay covered it (at least once)? A hit single seems so much more ephemeral than, say, a tree.

I just went to an exposition of Japanese maples at the 150 year old Bambouseraie d'Anduze. A privately held 34 hectare botanical garden, it is aptly named as its collection includes over 300 types of bamboo. Black ones, striped ones, purple ones, yellow ones, minute ones that form a spiky lawn, massive ones that reach 25 meters, in short, all kinds of bamboo. There's also the largest magnolia tree in Europe, sequoias, on-going often breath-taking natural art installations, an aquatic garden (note: April is too early in the season to see much in the way of the normally sensational water lily collection), a large Japanese garden, a labyrinth made of living bamboo, etc., etc. All this irrigated with five kilometers worth of elegant, narrow water canals.

At first blush years ago, it seemed so odd that I'd keep coming across stands of bamboo in the Cevennes. I mean, it's the south of France, not southeast Asia, right? But for the very wealthiest some two hundred years ago, having a collection of exotic trees (sequoias brought in by ship from California, bamboo from China) was not only a trend but a way of flaunting a very particular status. On the larger properties in the Cevennes, you can still come across some extraordinary specimens. As my neighbor says: we don't plant trees for ourselves, we plant them for our grandchildren.In the shorter term, we're getting near-summer weather here: the swallows are back in the eaves of the roof, and I've broken out the ice cream maker. First came the house standard, coconut ice cream. Then this custardy, ultra-decadent version of green tea ice cream by chef Yoshi Katsumura. A sunny afternoon with a friend's a pretty fine excuse to enjoy matcha...but nearly any moment'll do, really.

Glace au thé vert/抹茶アイスクリーム (Green Tea Ice Cream)

1 liter whole milk
15 g powdered Japanese green tea, or matcha
12 egg yolks*
400 g sugar
1 cup heavy cream

Bring milk just to the boil. Remove from heat, add green tea and allow to infuse. In a separate bowl, beat egg yolks and sugar together until they form a pale yellow ribbon. Combine egg mixture and milk, then strain into a saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat and remove just before the mixture reaches a boil; cool completely over ice water. Beat heavy cream until frothy. Pour into egg mixture and mix well. Process in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions. Mmm...

*This is not a typo. Save the egg whites to make meringue cookies, which go well with this ice cream, or a cup of green tea.

Sunday kind of fun, side of muffins.

What do you do on an Easter sunday after the eggs have been rolled out of their hiding places, the smoked trout tart and chopstick-slim asparagus in lime/caper vinaigrette consumed, the blood orange and cardamom upside-down cake--au David Lebovitz--demolished, the treacle-thick coffee downed? You head to the annual Jeux de Mômes--or Tykes' Games.

Picture if you will, at the village school, some forty low-tech games of skill for kids of every age--Mikado for giants, hay-pitching, a wandering comedy and music-making duo on wheels, an obstacle course hung with little bells, coordination games made of hand-cut wood, and decorations in primary colors. The canvas set up behind the raging tug'o'war (above) was made earlier in the day by hurling (real) eggs that had been filled with paint; the resulting "fireworks" bloomed on the canvas and a screaming good time was had by all. Imagine kids pedaling like lunatics to nowhere, their leg power making a paper arrow swing over an old map--a metaphorical Tour de France. The photos I took are by no means prize-winners, but in the general hilarity I'm frankly surprised they turned out at all; I hope you get a feeling for the bubbling merriment. There was cheering and a helping push or two for the soapbox derby.Then there was a rollicking five-instrument band making folk music in French and the deep dialect of the region. The kids held sway for the first hour, twirling and stomping, swinging and parading, shining eyes and flush-faced to a one, from the three year olds to the fifteen year olds.

Of course, a kid needs some victuals in the course of all this excitement. As did many other parents, I brought a few liters of crêpe batter for the buvette, or food/drink tent. I also brought these muffins. Like the photos, they aren't beauty contest finalists. They won't make you want to eat your screen, either--if you've never had them before. Fine-textured and light, infused through and through with inviting clove, banana and a touch of citrus, they're a simple riff on the classic banana bread, rendered more toothsome with just a bit of whole wheat flour. They're what my nine year old wants to make (yes, that easy and quick...), when sunshine and exertions call for something that'll make you feel good.

Muffins à la banane et clou de girofle (Banana Clove Muffins)

Makes about 16 muffins.

1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 whole wheat flour

2/3 (scant) cup sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch

2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup smushed ripe bananas (squeezing them in your fist is messy but effective)

1/3 cup room-temperature butter, chopped or olive oil

2 tablespoons bottled orange or multifruit juice (it's thicker than fresh squeezed)

between 1/4 and 1/2 teaspoon ground clove

2 tablespoons finely minced orange zest (no bitter white pith)

2 large eggs

optional: 1/4 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger, or nuts, or apple

Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Lightly grease two 8-cup regular-sized muffin pans.

Combine all ingredients except eggs and the optional addition in a large bowl. Beat on low speed until flours are blended, then add eggs and mix at highest speed for a couple of minutes. Stir in the addition, if desired.

Fill greased muffin cups half full and bake 30 to 35 minutes, or until a toothpick, placed in the center of a muffin, comes out clean. Allow to cool at least ten minutes before removing. Should be stored in an airtight container, where they will keep for three days, although they've never stayed around that long in my kitchen.

Two wheels on the tarmac.

I haven’t always lived in France. I was in the American Midwest for a time, in Madison, Wisconsin, up the road a bit from Chicago. If you didn't know it, Madison is one of the most bicycle friendly cities in the United States, brimming with bike lanes and locals who boast some serious equipment.

After that I moved to Amsterdam, considered by many to be the most bicycle friendly city in the whole world. In [pancake flat] Amsterdam, practically half the inhabitants have a bike--and not a helmet between them. The Dutch can do anything on a bike, from what I've seen. I remember watching a man in formal wear, leaving the multi-story bikepark by Central Station, ferrying a full-size Christmas tree on his bike. Biking’s just what you do in the Netherlands, like breathing, three-kiss greetings--le-e-eft, right, left--and avoiding turds on the pavement.

Now I live in the Cevennes, and the Tour de France all but passes outside my gate. This is at least part of the reason there are adventure bikers on the roads three out of the four seasons. People come from far away to kill--I mean test--themselves on these steep mountain roads. It is only logical to assume that I am a committed cycler as well.

But: I don’t know how to ride a bike; never learned. No deprived childhood, there was simply a lot of moving, from Sierra Leone to (the country formerly known as) Zaïre to South Africa, and so on. By the time I reached Amsterdam, it had dawned on me what I’d been missing, but I was no longer willing to take risks given the small child (followed by another) surgically attached to my hip. Amsterdam is a congested city, and the bicycling is not for the faint of heart, even if you do see impeccably coiffed, elderly ladies tooling around—and yes, Queen Beatrix and family have been known to bike too. (Very old photo courtesy of insideroyalty.) Here in France, in the grueling smackdown that is summer, I do not understand the bikers. I mean, I truly do not comprehend. Where are these weekend warriors going in the hottest part of the day, when all the locals are most sensibly asleep? Is there a fantastically good restaurant I don't know about? The bikers wear lurid Lycra. And just looking at their helmets makes my scalp itch. These people do not smile, because they are in full, sweat-soaked suffering. I am somewhat surprised I haven’t yet come across one of the 50-something guys (on a holiday from his desk) in mid-heart attack.

But I do understand the bikers in gentle spring. Roads here wend and wind, and are narrow, only just meant for two-way traffic—and occasionally not even that. They wiggle, shudder across plains then sprint uphill toward the mountains. In spring, the roads pass vineyards, where the closed, black fists of the vines rise out of a cloud of tiny canary-yellow wildflowers. A biker has time to watch the sheepdogs work a mob of sedate sheep, bells a-ringling, just behind a low stone wall spattered with lichen. A biker may even slow down to watch the pair of eagles riding the air currents above my house. And only in spring can a biker eye a line of still unadorned poplar, standing sentry over the gentle swale of an electric-green meadow, cycle up the way just a smidge further, and watch the sunny, half-asleep plain reveal itself below, wide as all get-out. I may just need to find an old bike after all. Think I'll pour another glass of mint lemonade and consider the matter a bit more.

La grêle, les fleurs.

So this is short and sweet, unlike the storm that blew through today in the less than balmy south of France. Can you say "la grêle"? Because that is what we were saying, along with some other choice words. It hailed. It's April, or very, very nearly so. I didn't take photos during the hailstorm, it was just too grim; besides, I was busy consoling my appalled Weimaraner. Who knew the sky could crack open quite so loudly, over and over again? No golfball-sized hail, but large enough for my dog to decide he was going to hold it for a looong time.

I went to check for damage afterward, camera in hand, but even though it had sounded fairly apocalyptic, most blossoms were still whole (the ones that haven't been already ruined by the last Norwegian-style snowfall, that is). Perhaps it helps that we've gotten a slow start to spring.

My camera and I were followed by a capering crew of animals and children. (Can you see one of them above?) My daughter started picking violets. Lots of them. To make a secret potion for spring (obviously!), which she proudly shared with me after working at the petals with my mortar and pestle and a bit of sugar. It was a minute amount of "eau de violette". You could indeed just smell the flowers...There are actually French sirops de violette, or violet syrups, available on the market. They aren't particularly easy to find, but you can get them, and I imagine a judicious touch might liven berry desserts, jams, even ice creams. And just think, crystallized violets to top it all off. This got me thinking, which then had me dusting off a bottle given to me of--bingo, violet liqueur. The most famous violet liqueur comes from Toulouse, where at peak production in the early 1900s, there were some 600 producers formally organized in a cooperative, cultivating some 150 acres. Violets are also sold fresh, go into perfume, those syrups. The liqueur is used to make a number of classic cocktails (like the 1930s Aviation cocktail), which Jonathan Gold recently wrote about at Gourmet Magazine. It is also used to make kirs, using white wine or Champagne. Doesn't violet liqueur seem right up the alley of, say, Martha Stewart? Will this concoction lose its Grandma's cupboard connotations? I, for one, would like to cook with it. I did do a quick search, and found a recipe for homemade liqueur, for in case you're intrigued. 180 grams of violets for a bottle of liqueur. That is a pile of violets. We have a lot out in the meadow, but I think I'd rather candy them.

Any ideas for how to use that liqueur in the kitchen?

After the storm.

Flora.

A body can travel a long way to see flowers. In my case, it involved some 9,000 kilometers. Just in from the western coast of South Africa, below Namibia and well above Cape Town, there is an arid, wide-open landscape (some 450,000 square kilometers worth) that is the ancestral home of the hunter-gatherer San, or Bushmen.

There is art to be found in the vistas there, both man-made, in the form of shamanic San rock paintings, and natural, in the form of the rock itself, the mineral riches it yields, and the plants and trees that grow upon, through and under it.

The flora in South Africa is particularly diverse: botanists divide the world's continents into six plant kingdoms. The Cape floristic (also known as the Cape floral) kingdom is the smallest, but contains by far the highest known concentration of plant species in the world. The region's main vegetation type is fynbos, which are a collection of evergreens, shrubs, and small plants with tough, fine leaves, and reeds. In June 2004, the Cape floristic region was given international recognition as South Africa's sixth UN World Heritage site. More than 9,000 plant species make up the region--6,000 of which are found nowhere else on Earth.

Well-timed, ample rains permitting, the Namaqua expanses are utterly transformed during spring (which corresponds to the Northern Hemisphere's late summer). For a brief, dream-like span of time, the flowers come, in all their evanescent glory and variety.

There is more to a land than its vistas, of course, just as there is more to a meal than the accompanying wine. In the Languedoc, however, I have heard a saying: a meal without wine is like a day without sun. With this post, I begin then, with the 'sun' of the Western Cape. I hope you will enjoy the video--it was the only way I found to adequately give you a sense of the scope of a desert in bloom.

Shawn Colvin is performing "Ricochet in Time."
Tip: Click on the HQ icon for better viewing.

April showers in May.

We got hailed upon, too. The wisteria suffered a bit. This may nearly qualify as an armegeddon of sorts, for the south of France. But the chickens (now there are three), horses (now there are many) and dog (just one but it feels like more) are none the worse for wear...Hope there is better weather to come this weekend, here and in your neck of the woods!