Of Hares and Hedges: Autumn in the Tarn

Autumn in the Tarn

It’s official – the world has gone mad. Real wars with tanks and rockets, political wars, economic wars, vaccine wars, culture wars, and eco wars, in which privileged middle-class dimwits consider hurling mashed potatoes and tins of tomato soup at inanimate works of art to be an act of heroism akin to standing up to Iran’s morality police. ‘I definitely did feel scared,’ said one of the  ‘Just Stop Oil’ pair who threw tomato soup over Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’. Ah, bless. And, as The Times revealed, these heroes are funded by, among others, heiress Aileen Getty, granddaughter of J Paul Getty, once the richest man in the world, and, wait for it, former oil tycoon…

Cathar martyrs and the Crusading Army

As autumn arrives in our hamlet we are glad to be far from the madding crowd and enjoying the douceur of the countryside. Our local heroine is La Dame Guiraude de Lavaur, who in 1211, dared to defy Simon De Montfort’s brutal troops by offering her protection to the persecuted Cathars. For her courageous stance, she was given to the crusading soldiers, raped, thrown down a well and stoned to death.

 

EXTRACT: FROM NETTLES TO NIGHTINGALES:  Hedge Planting and Meadow Makeover

In 2012 our garden was showing some signs of becoming the Mediterranean paradise we’d envisioned in the nightingale-induced Epiphany of our first night at The Cowshed. The next pressing task was to plant hedges. A shift was taking place in the countryside; as small farmers grew too old to work the fields, they would lease or sell. The new owners, with their giant machines, had ripped out some of the old hedgerows, causing mud slides down the hillsides as well as removing natural habitats. Our new ones would not only serve as attractive boundary markers, they would make an important contribution to wildlife propagation and diversity, providing leafy habitats to numerous creatures – the nice ones, of course, birds, rabbits and maybe even hares.

Spring 2012. The garden takes off with baby cypress and wild flowers on north slope

In the spring of 2012 I was strolling down the chemin when I noticed a bizarre scene in the bare field on the left.  Two dogs were standing on their hind legs having a fight. A closer look revealed the dogs had very long ears and white tails…mad March hares having a boxing match!  What a thrill! It was the first time I’d ever seen a hare, let alone a pair of them knocking the stuffing out of each other, their forepaws a blur of movement.  In the years to come, we saw many more, and during the summer of 2020 when a serious drought descended on Occitania, we were treated to another magical experience.

2020, glorious hedges, cradles for baby hares

By then our hedge plants were fairly well-established, but the unprecedented long spell of dry weather was taking its toll, calling for regular watering. Though the sun had gone down, it was still stiflingly hot.  The MDM was on watering duty, gazing up into the purple dusk trying to spot a UFO, not paying much attention to the garden hose in his hand. But as he moved further up the field, he glimpsed something on the grass under the bush he’d just soaked. Looking more closely he made out three baby hares – leverets. They were in their ‘nest’, a shallow indentation aptly named a ‘scrape’, fitted together, head to toe like slippers. They were almost invisible, having obviously paid attention to Maman Lièvre when she told them to flatten their ears and not to twitch a whisker throughout the long hours of her absence. So there they lay, freshly showered, their huge almond-shaped eyes standing out from their drenched fur. I was beckoned over, and we stood for a few moments in entranced silence. Obviously the temptation was to pick them up and take them back to The Cowshed for a cuddle and a saucer of warm milk. But, nature having its own laws, we knew we had to leave them where they were, praying the owl didn’t pay a midnight visit. The next morning all three were gone, which we took as a sign that Maman had decided to do a moonlight flit to a drier home with her three babes rather than contemplating a more bloody scenario.

Spot the dancing leveret shooting off…

Another astonishing encounter with a hare occurred in the spring of 2021. Due to Covid, our quiet hamlet had become even more wild and unfrequented. I was ambling along the chemin as usual, pausing to admire the new foliage and the first traces of green on the fields, when a leveret hopped out, a couple of metres ahead. I immediately adopted a tree impersonation, resisting the temptation to get out the phone and take a picture. The babe hopped almost to my feet, then tilted its head. After staring at me for a few seconds, it suddenly performed a vertical take-off, leaping into the air from all four feet.  

This impressive feat was followed by a virtuoso dance routine. It twirled, pirouetted, threw in more of those amazing standing jumps, turning to look coyly in my direction after each move. Nobody puts Baby Hare in the corner! I was so excited that when it took its final bow and shot off,  I  tried to capture it with the phone camera-too late!-then rushed to the neighbours to describe what had happened. Did hares dance? Had they ever seen anything similar? The answer was no, and the way they were eyeing me I got the impression they were wondering if I’d abandoned my usual croissant and coffee that morning in favour of a demi-saucisson and half a litre of vin blanc…

Others who gave a vote of approval to our hedge scheme were the deer, who, in later years, liked to breakfast on the new shoots of one of our most spectacular dogwoods. They were a rare sight, so we resisted putting up protective netting even though the dogwood ended up lopsided.

Garden makeover. A very big machine.

In charge of the meadow’s new look was our tree whisperer, Munns Le Magnifique. Along with his buddy, Patrick Le Pelletier, he dug out three long trenches marking our boundaries, then levelled off an area at the foot of the slope. This marked the first step of our next project – the Sunset Terrace.

Nightingale concert: pre-performance drinks on the Sunset Terrace

Since the nightingale had returned to our garden in 2012, his favourite opera house was the fig tree at the bottom of the field.  Our idea was to create a sheltered spot where we would be in the front stalls for the performance, as well as ideally placed to watch the spectacle of the sun setting behind the medieval village across the valley. Going for the Full Romantic, we planned a small olive grove next to the terrace, complete with poppies and wild thyme.

 

 

 

Olives and poppies next to the Sunset Terrace

Neither the MDM nor I knew much about the best shrubs for hedges. Many local gardens were surrounded by magnificent thickets of box and yew, but as these had taken 150 years to grow, something faster was required.

We called a meeting with Le Magnifique who, as usual, had his own ideas. Each evening he would email a list of suggestions, and I would look them up on the internet. The result was three splendid mixed hedges, deciduous and evergreen, full of scent and colour. Most of the bushes were unfamiliar to us: silverberries, or oleasters, fragrant-leaved shrubs found near the Mediterranean; osmanthus, another scented evergreen, this one from East Asia; a variety of dogwoods; Cotinus, called the smoke bush in English, (no guesses for what their large flowers look like); Ligustrum, a variety of privet; Spirea, known by the lovely name of meadowsweet in English, covered with pretty sprays of pink and white flowers….the list went on.

Young hedges in 2014, not much showing as yet

They didn’t look like much when they went in. The project was another big financial investment, so we’d opted for ‘slips’, fragile, twiggy things which gave no hint of their future splendour. In total, there were 56 of them, producing beautiful surprises over the years for all four seasons.  Once they grew to maturity, we would stand on our hilltop, looking down at the meadow, listening to the rustle of leaves, imagining the hares sleeping in the moonlight and the deer crossing in the pale dawn, and hope that others, after us, would find the same pleasure in the sight, and perhaps see ghostly traces of our footsteps in the dew. 

Evening reveries from our hilltop

 

BOOK NEWS…..BOOK NEWS….BOOK NEWS

Fans of John Dolan will be thrilled to hear his latest book is out, and it’s a stunner. Land Of Red Mist, a work of historical fiction, completes the cycle of books which make up the 7- volume Time, Blood and Karma and Children of Karma series. Grab it here and here. For thriller fans who haven’t yet discovered this addictive series, start with the first book,  Everyone Burns ” a corker of a detective story…by the time I finished the novel, I was panting for more.” (Robert A. Cohen, Amazon review).

Happy reading!

P.S. In my last blog, July 2022, I was looking forward to building sandcastles in August with my great-nephews. The Fates intervened, and for the last two months I have been strapped up with a fractured humerus, unable to write or build sandcastles…the boys had fun, though! Happy to be back in the blogging saddle once more….carpe diem, and stay upright 😉

©Laurette Long 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Nettles to Nightingales: July is the cruellest month

No Man’s Land

Ten years ago, in May 2011, the MDM and I said goodbye to our small flat (which we loved) in la ville rose (which we loved) to move to a converted farm-building in a four-house hamlet in the Tarn. The house was fully renovated but the ‘terrain’ which came with it could have been the perfect location for a WW1 film – a No Man’s Land of nettles, brambles, boulders, rusty iron rods and bits of old sink tumbling down a hillside into a neglected, treeless field.

Toasting the brambles

That first evening, dragging chairs outside after an exhausting move in 36° heat, we were both wondering the same thing – had we gone mad? With stoic smiles and sinking hearts we raised plastic glasses in a toast to our new adventure.

It was very quiet on the hilltop. Our nearest neighbours were away; the insects and birds had  gone to bed, leaving a vast, unbroken silence without a breath of wind or sigh of leaves. Beyond our wasteland, the overwhelming expanse of fields, hills, valleys, woods lay all around under an even more overwhelming, steadily darkening sky. Then, from the next door garden, the hush was broken by three long, pure notes, followed by a tentative trill, like a flute tuning up.

We paused mid-sip.

The air quivered, the invisible songster burst forth: opening bars like liquid honey, a distinctive bubbling melody, gathering force, then a gradual crescendo to a joyous, sparkling final aria.

Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats

I had heard a similar performance only once before, on a hot June night at a wedding in Provence. But once heard, the magic of the nightingale’s song is unforgettable.  No wonder this small, dun-coloured bird, the Keatsian  ‘light-winged Dryad of the trees’ singing of summer ‘in full-throated ease’ sends poets into raptures. No wonder it inspires song writers swooning after a kiss in Berkeley Square.  No wonder its song cured the Emperor of China.  No wonder it found a path through the sad heart of Ruth, standing in tears amid the alien corn. No wonder my arms and legs broke out in goosebumps. I was so excited I jumped to my feet, almost knocking over the MDM and his ‘beaker full of the warm south’. Reader, I had an epiphany!

The epiphany

Before my eyes (a bit misty on account of the light-winged Dryad), the brambles and nettles vanished. In their place, a bountiful paradise sprang up: hedges of lavender, thickets of rosemary, golden-flowering gorse, pink oleander, wild thyme covered in purple flowers, sage, savoury…The wilderness was transformed into Eden; trees and bushes rose up, sun-drunk plants undulated down the hillside and spilled into the field, the field became a meadow, bejewelled with poppies, cornflowers and buttercups spreading as far as the ancient fig tree bursting with fruit. From this mirage a ghostly fragrance rose into the air, that unique, aromatic scent which spirals like incense over the Mediterranean garrigue on hot summer days. Our future garden!

A nightingale will do that to you.

Wikimedia Commons Frederick William Frohawk in ‘Birds of Great Britain and Ireland’, Order Passeres, vol. I, plate 13, PD-US, by Arthur G. Butler

It has done so every year since we moved. For ten springtimes, the rossignol philomèle has arrived punctually at the end of April. There are now hosts of rossignols, in the garden we’ve created, in our neighbours’ gardens, in the nearby woods. They sing day and night, casting their enchantment over the hamlet. Ornithologists have counted between 120 and 260 different sequences in their dazzling repertoire.

But Nature has its rhythms. April passes, then May, then June. The day dawns when we no longer hear the nightingales. In the cruel month of July, the beautiful songster falls silent.

Adieu! Adieu! Thy plaintive anthem fades…past the near meadows..up the hillside…

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music: Do I wake or sleep?

John Keats: Ode to A Nigtingale

Now we must cross our fingers and wait for another spring, to sit among the lavender and oleander, among the thyme and the olive trees, listening for those first uplifting notes heralding one of nature’s marvels – the song of the nightingale.

Thy plaintive anthem fades…past the near meadows..up the hillside…’

 

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 Never heard a nightingale sing?

In this  link you can hear it in all its matchless glory, and read the astonishing story of Beatrice Harrison, a cellist who in the 1920s  played duets with the nightingales in her garden. On May 19th 1924 the BBC recorded such a duet, the first ever outdoor broadcast. During WW2 these broadcasts took on a special significance, boosting the morale of a nation at war.

Although we hope that our four households have encouraged the nightingale to return to our hamlet each spring, in England it’s a different matter. The nightingale population is dwindling. Here you can meet musician and conservationist Sam Lee and discover an annual event called Singing With Nightingales. His book, The Nightingale, (on my TBR list), published in March this year can be bought here.

‘O, for a draught of vintage…tasting of Flora..and Provençal song…’ Artist Gordon Seward

From Nettles to Nightingales is my current work-in-progress, recounting the story of a French garden and its two novice gardeners. When will it be finished? The jury’s out on that. Who knew it would be so hard? Watch this blog-space and say a little prayer to the Muse for the exhausted author 😉

 

 

 


© Laurette Long 2021