And certain things always come round . . .
My birthday for one, and this year, unlike many where I'm working, or Mark is away on a gig, it was very memorable.
I got on a train in the early morning, headed for Bordeaux and met someone we follow on various platforms, and greatly appreciate. He bought me lunch and we chatted avidly for a couple of hours. I felt quite bereft when he had to go - a sudden rich encounter probably not to be repeated as he lives on another continent, but you never know. Afterwards I wandered about sketching as I do, slept soundly in my little B and B room and caught the tain back early the next morning. Quite an extraordinary day which I will remember all details of, such are those memory forming times.
The other early October happening for us is the making of pomegranate jelly. Never bought ones! they have to be found just like all other fruit we turn into jam. We've been doing this now for about twenty-five years, ever since we moved into our French house in the South which had several 'grenadiers' clinging to a steep and dusty south facing slope in our garden. Each year the harvesting would happen; out would come the chopping board, hefty knife and rubber gloves, and I'd sit outside on the terrace splitting the fruit and scooping out the seeds.
The yearly crime scene
Since moving Northwards we're still in a pomegranate possible zone although the trees are not common. Such happiness when I discovered a couple of grenadiers in someone's garden in a nearby town. They looked somewhat bemused (the people, not the pomegranate trees) when I asked if we could take some, but six years on, and we're still visiting the tree, making jam and taking the tree owner a pot to thank them.
