I am sorry to have been remiss in my writing duties of late. My family and I are spending a month in the South of France and thinking about what to do in the garden isn't high on my radar at the moment.
Of course there are gardens everywhere. For the next month I am solely in charge of the two little French balcony gardens that grace the front of our apartment.
The floor to ceiling windows of our apartment, face out onto a charming pedestrian lane in the old town of Montpellier France and the balconies are a classic French street scene.
Balcony is a slight exaggeration - as they only extend about a foot from the building front. Large enough for me to stand out on at night and enjoy a glass of local wine as I water the parched succulents and heliotrope.
I spent the past few days driving through fields of sunflowers to see the Tour de France in the Luberon. Fields of sunflowers are everywhere in the South of France - and not just growing in the ground. Provencal linens, pottery and tile seem to echo the bright blues and yellows that Van Gogh talked about when painting in the region.
The latin name for sunflowers is Helianthus annus- which comes from the greek word helios (sun) and anthus (flower). (I'm starting to feel like the patriarchal Dad in My Big Fat Greek Wedding as he proclaims that "every word comes from the Greeks").
The French word for sunflower is tournesol, and is literally a perfect translation. "Turn sun" illustrates the fact that young sunflowers orient themselves towards the sun, which is exactly what they do. Keep that in mind when planting sunflowers. Depending on which direction we drive, the vast fields face or turn away from us.
Provence is the land of Van Gogh - who lived in the area and was inspired by the light and the sunflowers as you may know from his famous sunflower series of paintings. The most famous of them was done in 1888 in his summerhouse in Arles, about 40 minutes from our home base.
Vincent Van Gogh rented four rooms in this house, which is located on the place Lamartine, and it was indeed called the yellow house. If you know the picture, his living quarters were the ones with the green shutters.
The view is an exploration of the classic contrast of blue and yellow and very indicative of the Provence area.
We stopped in Arles the other morning for coffee but haven't had a chance yet to take in the Van Gogh sites. So many great places and so little time.
France's sunflowers are not just aesthetic. The country is the second largest producer of sunflowers in the world. Sunflowers are grown to primarily produce edible vegetable oil, which is extracted from its seeds.
As the French were the original proponents of eating and using what's in season, I'm off to the market to find a bunch of sunflowers to brighten up our room.
