Wedding

Garden surroundings

 

Garden setting

 

Bride and father of the bride

Last Saturday and Sunday I went to my first wedding in France. My neighbours son married a gorgeous girl called Isabelle. If a picture is worth a thousand words why write. Here are some pictures of the wedding and the garden where the celebrations took place.

Bride and Groom

Cocktail Hour

 

 

Karen, Peter , Me

George and Me

Happy Couple

Sunflowers

It was Saturday night, 9.45. I was watching Detective Lewis solve a crime on TV when the phone rang. It seemed as though the TV had been transported to my living room when M said “ it’s dark now we can go and steal some sunflowers. Are you up for it?”   “Are you serious, I replied”   “Sure am she said. Do you want to come?”. “ Sure do, said I”.

Armed with torch and secateurs I whizzed up to her place and we were off, but where to? There are fields of gorgeous sunflowers everywhere. We decided the closest was best. She was for going into the thicket so we would not leave evidence of our burglary but I was all for a swift roadside raid.

I ventured into the field with trepidation wondering out loud about snakes and M responded; “there are no snakes here, this is not Australia”. Choosing sunflowers by torchlight is not as easy as one might think and I was mindful that we were taking someone’s livelihood as these are a cash crop beautiful though they are.  As the huge leaves I snipped off the stems fell to the ground I laughed as I asked “do you think these might have DNA on them. M replied “that’s why I’ve got gloves on, but when the police arrive at your house in the morning waving leaves”!!!!!!!!!! Seeing the lights of a car across the valley I remarked that I hoped they would not come our way. M said “is it the sunflower police”?

The last time I ventured into bloom burgulary was twenty or more years ago with my dear friend PK. We cut long stems of the wonderful January flowering Hedychium, or ginger lily in a park in Vaucluse in Sydney. He, being a gardening genius knew where the best ones grew. Each summer when I go back to Sydney I look for them for sale by the stem in the fruit stalls in Kings Cross.  Two or three will perfume the whole house.  But for now though in summer in the Tarn it is sun and sunflowers.

Apero

Apero

In the tenth century at the Abbey St. Michel in Gaillac some monks planted the first vineyards of what is now the Gaillac Wine Appellation. Last night I went wih my English neighbours Anita and Ray to an apero at this ancient Abbey.

Come for an apero! The French shorten the word aperatif to apero when they ask you round for a drink in the evening. This habit of shortening many words or worse turning lots of phrases into acronyms means a foreigner like me has to almost learn a third language in order to get along linguistically.
Every second Friday night during July and August there is an apero in the garden behind the Abbey. For the princely sum of five euros you can buy a plate with olives, cheese, salami and chips along with a ticket for two glasses of wine. Then you find a table and chair and bask in the wonderful evening light on the banks of the Tarn River and listen to the band play and watch the French dance. They dance at every opportunity. No matter what the music, it is the same dance and I swear every one of them can dance at birth. A different band plays each week. Last night it was Salsa.  It could be New Orleans Jazz or Country and Western. About two hundred people can fit into the grounds and it is always crowded with young and old.  There seems to be no age bar at social gatherings here, unlike Australia and also I'm told the UK where neither oldies nor children are truly welcome.
While the young and not so young danced or gossiped, the children played happily in the tiny vineyard "garden" planted in the grounds. Anita commented that in England they could well be classed as "out of control" .  French children are extremely well behaved and as they are taken everywhere with their parents from birth they are very well adjusted socially.

It was a great evening and watching the dancers and the happy faces of the crowd reminded how much my small enterprise Vin de Tarn  has to offer for visitors to this area. My groups become more like family rather than simply clients or tourists during a lively busy week here in lovely Labarthe-Bleys. They get to experience a real Taste of the Tarn on evenings like this.