I live in the garrigue of southern France. If you stand on a Mediterranean beach near the city of Narbonne and move north, you’ll pass through flat and fertile river land before arriving in my regional garrigue. It’s a rough, rocky, hilly terrain that marks the transition from flat farmland to the low mountains of the Haute Languedoc region.
The garrigue is terribly difficult to farm, but people have been trying for a few thousand years. This land is hilly, dry and rocky. It used to be covered by forests, but those were chopped down, first by the Greeks (who arrived in the 6th century B.C.) and then by the Romans, who established Narbonne in 118 B.C. They all used a lot of wood, and entire forests were wiped out during this period.
Being so dry and rocky, the recovery process has been slow indeed, and what we have today—2,000 years later—still doesn’t look like what the Greeks and Romans saw. In place of forests of tall trees, we have lower-growing, scrubby varieties of oak and other deciduous trees, plus some evergreens. In the mountains just to the north, there are chestnut forests, but those stately trees don’t grow here.
What we do have, though, is a remarkable variety of wildflowers, herbs and a few edible plants. A few days ago, I joined my friends Maryse and Claude, who wanted to show one particular area to some friends from Canada. We built an entire morning’s walk around the hunt for caper berries, and this post is about some of what we saw.
The photograph above is sunset on June 1. I had been invited by a friend to see her theatrical production in a nearby village, and the setting sun gave me a second round of entertainment as I returned to my car. I have written previously about the garrigue; the link to that older article is here.
Morning dew makes a wonderful abstract still-life in a flat cobweb that lies parallel to the ground.
Ant colonies have been quite busy lately, and this group was no exception. We paused in our walk to admire their astonishing project. One by one, ants were bringing these comparatively large bits of plant matter toward their nest, then carefully maneuvering to angle each piece down into the nest. It appeared that other ants were standing by and ready to receive each one. Also intriguing was that some of the “long-haul” ants were pushing their loads, like the one above left, while others were pulling theirs.
A forest of red valerian near my house.
A small patch of edible wild borage.
An especially lush immortelle plant. Immortelle is also called everlasting, or its latin name, helichrysum. The flowers are “ever-lasting” because they look pretty much the same dried as fresh. Essential oil from this plant is used in skin care products.
The pyramid orchids are plentiful this spring.
A beautiful Cupid’s Dart flower (cupidone in French), a member of the aster family. One petal has a puzzling line that I can’t explain.
Wild sweet peas began blooming about a week ago. Usually they’re fairly low-growing and of a faded red hue, but this year—perhaps thanks to all the rain in May—the plants are taller and the flowers are brilliant magenta.
I’m calling them baby winelettes—the tiny beginnings of wine grapes that have just begun to appear.
The magical and lovely caper flower has a sweet perfume, but it is best known for its buds and berries, which are pickled and eaten as a garnish.
On a steep incline, my friends gathered around a large caper bush (câprier in French) to harvest some berries.
The view from the south side of the pech, looking across the river plain and toward the Pyrenees. Pech is an Occitan word meaning “hill.”
I didn’t want to let this Earth Day slide past without at least a mention, a vote of confidence, a rousing voice from the cheering section.
Here in the South of France, we’ve had some perfect weather lately: warm during the day, cooler at night, with clear, crisp, fresh air. Air so clear that we’ve had several days with great views of the distant Pyrenees, still snow-capped. Yesterday I walked with my friends Maryse and Claude, all of us harvesting some thyme to dry and cook with during the coming year.
Today I celebrated Earth Day with a nice walk in the garrigue, the scrubby foothills just uphill from my house. There are a few photographs of Mother Nature’s handiwork, along with thoughts about this planet we call home.
Lo Vedo Life 