DEJA VU

This is where I started from as a child of nine.

My father sold his farmhouse to pay off the mortgage on the farm and built a new home in the middle of a mealie field - all red dirt and dry stalks and no trees for acres around. He scratched out a plan of the house on the earth and built the house from bricks made from termite hills. My mother scribbled out a plan of a garden on a foolscap page . . .

So here John and I are in the middle of mealie farms in France but we do have trees around us.

In front of the house is a fig with ripening fruit.

To the east is a neglected overgrown hedgerow with brambles, may, blackthorn, ash, and dog roses, sloes and a walnut. The nuts - hazels and walnuts are all worm eaten. We gathered a few sloes too late and hope to do better from the fig tree. The blackberries are all too high up to reach. The is also a huge and prolific pear but no possibility of getting any of the fruit.

Thank goodness! It is a huge amount of work preserving it and impossible to eat it all or give it away!