We went into our “verger” a couple of days ago. This is a smallish parcel of land that is connected to our house legally but is a good ten-minute walk away, uphill and across a perilous ledge. In my mind (the mind of an acrophobic) it is the Precipice of Doom where the only option if you go across this narrow ledge is to fall to your death and die on the sharp craggy rocks thousands of metres below. In reality, yes, the path is very narrow, in some parts perhaps just a metre in width, but the highest the ledge gets over the road below is perhaps five metres. Not only that, if you fell (which happens in every waking moment that I think of this ledge) you could grasp at the small bushes and grass on the way down. You would have to be very unlucky to get seriously hurt on one of these paths. Yes, multiple paths. A lot of these allotments are located in inaccessible areas and yet if you take the time to look, there are people perhaps a good twenty years older than me scrambling across these mountain passes to get to their fruits and vegetables or even the odd washing line.
I digress.
As we managed to get across the said Precipice of Doom I managed to find myself near the Abyss of Despair near our veggie patch. I suppose it can’t really be called a veggie patch but more of a fruit garden. There are apple and plum trees, blackberries and even an old lady of a cherry tree shading with her branches the majority of the plot. I have to admit on seeing the allotment a couple of days ago, my husband and I did feel slightly overwhelmed by the work needed to strim and prune the small garden. Not only that, the harvest of fruit was far too much for us to deal with in one visit.
Walking back home with a bulging bag of Reine Claude plums that sat on the stove not many minutes after, we felt this warm feeling of accomplishment. Nothing arrogant or self-centred, but that fuzzy feeling of harvesting your own food off the land and being able to share it with friends. Until next time, I will just have to content myself with traversing the Escarpment of Oblivion in my nightmares.
MidLife Crisis In France
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