Animals, an Amelanchier and the wider world

This weekend the French Covid restrictions will start, cautiously, to be eased - from Monday the 10 km radius for our journeys within France will be lifted though the evening curfew will only be lifted bit by bit.  That affects me taking the dogs for their late evening walk (for which I must carry an attestation until mid May - our shopping lists are written on old attestations for the moment!)  

Our lives have not varied much, but this week we bought a new garden tree/shrub/bush from a newly-discovered nursery not far from here.  We wondered if Amelanchiers, which we had in English gardens, would survive our hotter, drier climate, but were reassured by the man in charge of our excellent local arboretum and by the nurseryman., so our new little bush is proudly in the middle of the lawn near the tortoise enclosure and, lo, just as Mary was planting it the tortoise emerged muddily from her hibernation!  A week or so later than last year, but it is really good to have her back in view.

    

article about children reading more in lockdown in the Guardian offered me a moment to take notice of the everyday, and to be thankful that my mum encouraged me to read and use the public library. Reading is invaluable, and makes little noise in a time when many media are incredibly noisy. But laughing out loud was, I recall, still risky in my childhood: reading and enjoying Just William books under the bedclothes caused me occasional parental censure, especially when I disturbed the Quaker study groups downstairs! I try to ignore extraneous noise, but it drives me bonkers when someone's Facebook post unexpectedly bursts into speech or music - better to invite sounds in rather than have them blast out without warning (occasionally even waking a sleeping partner at night).

As we continue to mourn the lost opportunity to travel to Armenia again (it would have been a year ago) we take an interest in the terrible difficulties of the people in that tiny country for the sake of our friends there, and one of many good things coming out of the new USA last week was the announcement that President Biden formally recognises the  Armenian genocide.  It is incredible that (kowtowing to Turkey) they have been so slow to acknowledge such a blatant historic human rights abuse.

And among the fairly petty concerns people in the UK and Europe worry about, the appalling situation in countries further away, hooked into hard-line political agendas and too poor to afford the vaccines and treatments, even adequate health services, to cope with a flood of infections.  The people of India are in a profound crisis, somehow in scale with the terrible disasters and episodes of violence in the country’s history. European countries, and the US, have dithered and made false steps - I think we have to remember how fortunate we are. But political dogma and rigidity will always cap ineptitude.

Not my photo, but a beautiful shot of a vine near Pic Saint Loup which survived the recent frosts

Back to plants.  My normal shots of plants are pretty, but these have a whole different focus, and great importance for the future if you’re a wine lover. Looks rather more demanding than your average day in the garden!

At the St Christol Domaine de Coste Moynier

I have good memories of Glendurgan in Cornwall so am delighted to see it at the head of this article, as I am to celebrate spring flowers and blossom everywhere. But this campaign seems to have created a new kind of tree, a ‘blossom tree’. Not sure what that is - most blossom is a transient pleasure on the way to some fruit or other, or in cases like our beautiful grenadier, not due to flower for a month or more yet, categorised as flowering or ornamental trees or shrubs. Ah well, living language...

Podcasts are now a frequent source of information and entertainment for us, and one from the Guardian caught my attention last week - a real-life clown.  Have a listen.  Police spies seem to have been on the radar for ever. I read the book Undercover https://amzn.eu/anWjLlM at least 10 years ago, and it seems to be trickling throughthe judicial process just now.

It turns out a lot of my preoccupations are UK-related - somehow they are more spicy than the French ones I can disentangle!  May day, the fête du travail, is tomorrow, and it has just been announced that the traditional lilies of the valley will be able to be sold, though there are Covid restrictions on roadside sales and it turns out that some of the flowers on sale beside the road are stolen in the first place!