In these days of short reels and equally short attention spans, micro-blog instagrams, and AI everything, why would I start a longer form blog?
Well that is exactly why, actually. As I move into a new, slower, life in a rural community in south west France my first order of business is to slow down and pay attention to the details that make up my new life, and my new world. This includes both the physical details and the socio-cultural and deeply emotional responses evoked by this place.
Ironically, this kind of slow living is not so surprising to my French neighbors who are used to the shops closing from noon to 15:00 (3pm) for lunch, and for whom apéritif is permission to visit without fear of disturbing. In the summer, people go for a stroll after lunch and pass by to say hello or share a coffee and the fact that 3pm in France is 9am in the US and once I would have started my work day, I have learned to close the laptop and enjoy the visits.
In Sweden the tradition is to have lovely cakes to offer for fika and I might try to copy that habit — especially in the summer when there is so much fruit begging to be eaten. Catja Kroon tells us there are two times for fika, with the second called “eftermiddagsfika,” which translates as after lunch fika (the other being before lunch fika what I would call “elevenses” — and now I think about it folks do show up for coffee mid-morning. . .) Kroon’s blog offers some tempting suggestions.
For apéritif one has snacks, nuts or chips/crisps will do, olives, some sliced veggies and humous are also pretty easy to throw together. I love the mild radishes dipped in humous (I do not care for radishes with butter, do not ask). Our market sells the most amazing pickled garlic. And slices of hard cheese or smoked sausage or meat go down well. I hope you get the picture.
After a lifetime spent working, starting with babysitting at age 10, then work on a farm, in a supermarket, and as a cashier before I even left school, this unscripted time takes some getting used to. And after four decades in American universities I have been inscribed with neoliberal values way more than I wanted to admit. The demands for efficiency and externally assigned deadlines, and assessable outcomes of the corporate university have been replaced with a routine set by a culture that values connectedness and self care, and by the urgency of the garden, the orchard, the olives and truffles, and the oven timer. I’ll take it! Within another generation I suspect the culture will have been corporatized here, too, but I hope not.
And so I started this blog to help me slow down and pay attention. Each post will take as long as it does and may be revised. I imagine it as a mix of farmer’s almanac, image dump, and food blog in no particular order. I both want and need to keep track of where the sun slants on each day and what is in shadow at what time; sunrise and sunset, both time and where in the sky; the weather and its impact on plant and creature; what is in bloom, fruiting, or fallow at any given time; and what bugs and blights happen at what time and in what conditions.
This all could be a spread sheet, but it won’t be (although the Farmer’s Almanac page feels a bit like that at times). But I might as well record it here as in a notebook. I also want to use Cornell’s amazing Merlin app to tell me what birds are visiting (most of our birds are on the way to somewhere else aside from my beloved owl, about whom I have already written). I will write blog posts about the five stately Lindens in front of our house that provide leaves for salad and tea, blossoms for infusions, and berries that I gather one can also consume; but that also come alive with bees when the blossoms are out and filling the courtyard with the strong smell of honey and lime (hence their other name, Lime Tree). But I want to track the dates for those moments in the cycle of life I have joined. And the weather.
We came upon this property by a complicated path that was really very simple, but learning to live here and be effective stewards of the land and custodians of the house is anything but simple. It is a labor of love, but also a work in progress. Luckily the food is good and we are surrounded by wonderful people, some of them also ex-pats. Welcome to our adventure!
