Still gardening, a lesson in French

The wisteria comes into blossom

I scared a few people. I said I might never be able to garden again, but I didn't really mean it. I was just sayin', you know, that I was suffering considerably from the intensity of the efforts to clean this garden up. Every year has had its all-consuming tasks, like attacking one particular area of the garden and trying to improve it, sometimes with some success, but more often ultimately disappointing. Live and learn, or garden and learn, has become my motto. You need a thick skin to garden, not only for the rose and Firethorn bushes, but to manage the disappointments when you don't really know what you are doing.

I'll let you in on a secret: some people actually go to school to learn how to design gardens, and others, if they are any good, got a much earlier start than I did at 41 years of age facing a garden gone totally to weed, suckers and overgrowth with no garden budget to speak of.

There was only one real option: DYI.

And, there was only one real "Y": me.

The other "Y" present had been around for a few years before I arrived in Moosesucks, and let's just say that that "Y" had not manifested a considerable energy or resolve faced with the great literary thematic device of Man versus Nature. So, I began "do"ing "it", and aside from the fear that I might possibly have wasted important years of my life to "go down in history" for something (my objective at 25, as I vainly cried into the telephone receiver to my stepfather once, as he far more than kindly and tolerantly listened to my grandiosity, was to be known to History, and it only just occurs to me that this might be my punishment prior to actual death), I did begin to learn, only far, far too slowly given the time gardens take to let you know if you are succeeding.

The other secret: Pain is no excuse not to get out there and finish your work. Neither is the flu.

Yes, we went to Morzine-Avoriaz for a few days of spring skiing last week, and I returned bien grippée. I am, it turns out, a sensitive and delicate creature. My shoulders, thighs and attitude are highly misleading. In the tourist bus that wound its way back down to Annemasse and the highway to the TGV station in Bellegarde, everyone complained of the ventilation.

I refuse, steadfastly, to complain of ventilation, except when it is utterly absent, as in the case of getting in behind the steering wheel and suffocating, which is a sign that my husband, the complainer in the case of air conditioning and ventilation of any sort, including windows left ouvertes once it is no longer anything but stifling hot outside (and even then at night... you never know what will get inside, carried on the non-existent drafts), has been the last to drive the car.

The ventilation system was on full blast.

"Droit dans la gueule," or "right his face", complained my husband, while a few others pulled their sweaters and jackets up to protect themselves from the drafts. "Je commence à avoir mal à la gorge." I feared the worst. It is unpleasant to travel with a mildly infected man. You'd think you need more than a TGV full of pediatrians on their way back from a medical congress.

La gueule is a word you must know if ever you come to France. It refers to the face, more specifically, as in the case of animals, to the mouth (la gueule du chien), and is used in several very important verbs and combined words, such as: gueuler, or "to yell at"; se faire engueuler, or "to be yelled at"; and dégueuler, or "to puke".

The last is, I should think, self-explanatory, given the meaning concerning dogs. Which brings to mind dégueulasse, or "disgusting" (not to be used in polite society, where it is better to stick to dégoûtant(e)).

Gorge is another interesting word in French, given that it refers to the throat, as in mal à la gorge, or sore throat, but it also extends all the way to bust of a woman. Let me explain. The item of feminine lingerie we call a "bra", short for a word that the grandmothers and even the mothers of women of a certain age (mine) knew, "brassière", and pronounced "bra-zeer", is commonly referred to as a soutien gorge, or a soutif for short (not to be used in elegant company, however).

How, I ask, did the French get there, when a brassière had a perfectly understandable meaning, as an item of clothing resembling a camisole with sleeves intended to support the poitrine, or a delicate way of referring to the breasts of a woman by merely referring to the part of the body that begins at the bottom of the neck and extends to the abdomen. We all know what women have there without having to say it. Like the *[redacted], or the part of the body where babies are until they are born, and once conception and implantation have been achieved.

Please go here next, sign and return to this blog. Thank you.

Actually, you'll have to settle for reading this since the http://www.incorporatemyuterus.com site launched by the Florida ACLU seems to be down temporarily. It's probably overwhelmed with visits, even at this early hour in the States. Which makes very very glad to be in France, where it is the same word, and everyone is very comfortable saying it, and where there are a zillion ways to refer to the male member, or the penis.

Did I upset anyone? We can just use the word "verge" (the first "e" being pronounced like "air"; I don't want anyone laughing at you) from now on. Please note that it is feminine, like "bite" (pronounced "beet", and a big no-no in polite society), but unlike "zizi" (pronounced "zee-zee", and perfectly appropriate when talking to young children about this part of the body). In its feminine form, "Zizie" is the name of Titeuf's little sister. Feel better?

Which sort of oddly, or even straightforwardly, given the activities of the insects and the bees and the flowers, as well as, surely, the birds (being far more discreet) at this time, brings me back to the garden with one last word on the ventilation system on the bus. It was while standing on the platform, waiting for the TGV that my gorge began to hurt, and now my poitrine is full of nastiness. Maybe I should start to be concerned about air-born bacteria in bus ventilation systems, or skiing after too much wine and too many late, elaborate dinners.

But, I digress. The soutien gorge is an exceptional case of French modesty in all matters sexual, it supports the "gorge", which in this case does not mean the "throat". No, I joke. The French never feel the necessity for excessive modesty in all things sexual. "Gorge" referred to the breasts in times gone by, as in gorges de miel, or this sublime phrase from Balzac's Lys, written in 1836 (page 25, according to this online dictionary, but I bet the rest is worth reading, too):

Je (...) fus complètement fasciné par une gorge chastement couverte d'une gaze, mais dont les globes azurés et d'une rondeur parfaite étaient douillettement couché dans des flots de dentelle.

I swoon, but I digress.

Ordinarily, I find it wrenching to leave the Alps and put my ski equipment away, but not after spring skiing, when I have work to complete in the garden, and the wisteria is poised to burst into glorious, airy violet bloom. Which is not to be missed. It happens fairly suddenly, and it only lasts a short moment in garden time. It repeats, but very weakly, later in the summer. And, while I was gone, the pink tulips opened.

I apologize in advance for my inability to edit not only my writing, but my photos.

Now, it's time to go out and clip the box hedge along the stairs before I finish the big viburnum and some kind of conifer hedge down in the bottom garden. That is the big job of the moment.

C'mon, Garden Dog and Rapide, on y va.

....

* u-t-e-r-u-s

Forces of nature: natural, human and mechanical

Eye contact

As if it weren't bad enough already to have forgotten how to houseclean, I am completely distracted by the suddenness of this spring. Today, I could virtually watch the peonies push further up and unfurl their tightly packed leaves (they look kind of like cramped zombie hands reaching up through the dirt, until they open, which is something of a relief), and I did watch the algae come up from the bottom of the fish basin, thanks to the algae-eating bacteria I have been dumping into it since last week, making the frogs miserable with my frequent appearances (they like it when I stay perfectly still, better yet, when I stay in the house).

Leaf buds are clamoring to populate the grape vines that were bare until today, it seemed, the Clematis 'Daniel Deronda' is about to bloom, the first bud still bearing its soft, fuzzy veil of white, and the hyacinths -- ah! the hyacinths! -- have naturalized in the border, and I have more than in any year previous.

The daffodils, on the other hand, look like they have found a predator, or there was hail while we were in Morzine-Avoriaz. Their petals are in tatters, heads hung low in beaten beauty.

I was also completely distracted by the need to get rid of old files and defrag my hard drive (my computer agreed that it really needed to be done), then figure out why Picasa3 was crashing every time I tried to launch it, and, come to think of it, why it had been crashing Firefox the last few days. If you're interested, I know why after spending far too much time looking it up on Google. I can't find the other helpful reply I found, but basically you have to uninstall Quicktime and reinstall the latest version, then completely uninstall Picasa (no cheating, you've got to hit "yes" and uninstall the database, too, but don't worry, I didn't lose my albums since everything was already set up in my "My Pictures" directory file tree), and then reinstall it. Picasa will then read all your pictures back in.

It works, but your afternoon is shot unless you are faster than I am at finding the answers to your problems.

I am sure you are.

Now, why can't I just defrag myself to go faster, because I can tell you that today fully made up in uselessness for all my purposefulness of Wednesday.

....

The oak floor

The last day before our train to Morzine was exceptionally harried. I was very proud of myself. My husband was sure we would miss the train. My pride I kept to myself. There's just no sense in expecting it to be shared when he is about to travel. Dr. Himself and Mr. Hyde. There is simply no way, as far as he is concerned, that we can ever leave early enough. His brain races to make lists of all the things that will go wrong, and if the car is not already in motion before the appointed hour, we are late.

Irrevocably late.

We will miss the train, plane, keep everyone waiting for lunch, to open their Christmas presents. Whatever.

It has escaped his attention that I have taken to being the one waiting for him over the years we have vécus maritalement. How do I know that it has escaped his attention? Because he is still telling everyone that, thanks to me, we were nearly late because we left later than he wanted.

Stop. Observe. Who has her coat on and who is thinking of changing his pants, and then maybe his shoes, and then heading for his coat?

"Ah, bon. T'es prête alors?" he asks.

"Oui. Il est temps de partir," I reply, standing there in my coat, pulling my gloves on imperiously. Imperiousness is not easy for me. I am more prone to pouting and defensively motivated attacks that have a certain hostile edge to them. "Tu pourrais peut-être penser à te préparer."

"Oui, oui," he says, with surprise, "je t'attendais." Yes, yes. I was just waiting for you. This is what we call mauvaise foi. He was watching television.

Nonetheless, Wednesday, I had reason to be just a little proud of myself, for I had finished the calculations for the gypsum board, metal framing and insulation order at Point P, gotten there to place the order set up the delivery (for today), driven to the auto école to get the papers necessary for my son's auto insurance, dropped them at the bank, driven to the wood shop, arriving before they closed for noon for lunch, to order the furring strips for the oak floor and to buy the solid oak flooring so that it could begin acclimating to the room in which it will be installed during our absence, gaining, I hoped, a few precious days after our return to get it installed, unloaded it into the house, snagging my nice sweater on a large splinter in one bunch, finished up the plans to drop off at the masons' homes so they could do the estimates for the work at the entries while we were gone, and raced out the door to the car just as my husband opened the gate in the bottom garden, heading off to leave them in their mailboxes. Mission accomplished.

When I got home, Rapide was still not moving, and it was an hour until our departure time. She had started the night before with her take a step, sit down and look at me despondently, get up and take another step, and sit down and look at me, and so on all the way from the front door to the strip of grass where they take care of their digestive and urinary business alongside the France Telecom utility building next door. My husband was finishing up his bag.

"Je pense qu'on va être obligé d'amener Rapide au vetérinaire avant de partir," I announced bravely, leaving the tiniest hint of doubt and regret in my voice. Enough so he would know with absolute certainty that I had not done this on purpose.

I hadn't.

"C'est pas vrai."

He looked at Rapide, lying on the living room carpet, where she had spent her entire morning, despite the door being open to a beautiful spring day. I nodded, careful to show my concern, and reached for the telephone. It took several phone calls to their two offices and some desperation and pleading to establish that they would finally let us drop her off and have my son pick her up after he finished school. There was no way I could sit at their office and wait (and wait, and wait) for the vet to see her; I had to make it to a train. Or else.

Her temperature was 2° C below normal, qualifying her condition as hypothermic. This meant she had not been bitten by a tic and did not have whatever that terrible tic-carried disease was that Baccarat got when she was little.

Phew.

It could mean that she was slowly (or rapidly) bleeding to death internally.

Not phew.

"On peut la laisser," I announced, and ran up to finish my bag, under his impatient regard.

"Mais, tu n'es pas obligé de m'attendre comme ça. Tu me rends nerveuse me regardant comme ça." We say "comme ça" a lot.

"Je veux descendre ton sac dès qu'il soit pret," he answered. I wasn't going to have any peace; he wasn't going anywhere until I closed my bag, which he was doing even as I watching reaching for the last things. The ski socks didn't make it in on time.

It was 3:03 pm when we pulled the car door shut and put the car in gear.

It was 3:23 pm when I finally got Rapide into the doors of the vet's office, not far from the entrance ramp to the highway to Paris. Sit, step, sit, step -- you get the idea.

The receptionist asked me for the symptoms, taking careful notes. I was about to go crazy when she asked the same question for the 3rd time. She had it all there. Everything I had seen. She had my cell phone number. She had my blank check.

"Je peux la laisser maintenant afin d'éviter le divorce?" I asked.

"Oui, vous pouvez la laisser," she replied, coming around the corner to take Rapide's leash. She had to drag her, speaking softly, encouragingly and kindly to Rapide, toward the door to the examination rooms, while I bolted for the door and the car.

It was 4:00 pm when we passed under the sign announcing the time to the Porte d'Orléans above the Périphe.

"20 minutes à la Porte d'Orléans," said my husband. "C'est bon."

It was 4:23 pm when the a movement in the car about to catch up to us in the fast lane caught our attention.

"Mais, c'est eux!" I exclaimed. Eux was the colleague to whose apartment we were heading to meet him, and where we would leave our car, and another colleague, our other traveling companion.

I felt a rush of self-satisfaction. No one (he) could say I'd put us behind schedule, despite an unanticipated stop at the vet's. Nonetheless, if anyone could find a way to find reason to complain, he was sitting next to me, and he was content. I am pretty sure he felt my glow, across the stick shift and the hand brake, on his side of the car.

The phone rang the next day, while we were collecting our ski passes and heading toward the téléphérique to the ski slopes at Avoriaz. The vet's office. Rapide had nothing. Nothing whatsoever other than a meaningless cyst not even worth the notice on one kidney that couldn't have anything to do with her condition. She was weak the day before, that they granted, but there was nothing physically wrong with her that could explain her inability (or refusal) to walk.

I asked about dysplasia. My husband threw daggers at me with his eyes.

"Mais quoi encore?" I asked, exasperated.

"On t'as dit qu'il n'y a rien, et tu continues à poser des questions. Il savent faire leur diagnostique, tu sais."

"Oui, mais j'ai du mal à comprendre," I replied, dépassée, "et je ne vois pas qu'on ne peut prendre trois secondes plus pour que je finisse avec le vetérinaire. J'ai quand même le droit de poser des questions!" But, I knew the answer to that already.

I was taking the vet's time. I had been told she had nothing; she had nothing. Get over it. You're not going to ever understand why this dog has started behaving this way, as far back as the first day in Chamonix a month ago, or why her temperature was so low one day, only to return to somewhat below but nearly normal the next day.

Oh well, I thought, even after Sam gave me the total for the check the receptionist had filled out. 180 euros to know your 10-year-old stubborn and lazy Labrador Retriever is perfectly healthy is already that much.

"Elle va bien," said my husband, when the question came up again this evening, my son having confirmed that she has walked perfectly normally ever since we left. "C'est le cerveaux qui règle la température du corps, et on sait qu'elle a un déjà un gros handicap là."

Ha ha ha.

And we made it up the mountain to ski back down. And we made it home. And, Rapide is just fine.

And all the building materials await.


....

Spring skiing aux Portes du Soleil, Euphoria gracias!

Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii

I love Euphorbia characias. It sounds like Euphoria gracias! Thanks for immense bliss, ecstasy, elation, exhilaration, jubilation, exaltation, exultation and glee!

I bought these two Euphorbia characias plants last year and stuck them in amongst the overpowering mint alongside the steps to the second terrace last year. They weren't much to behold. I bought them wilted and on sale at Florosny at the end of the season just because I wanted some of this plant, but having no specific intention for it [trans.: no plan worked out requiring them]. Just plant them, let them establish themselves somewhere suited to them, and figure the rest out later.

Is it later yet?

So, I accompanied Audouin to les Gets, part of Les Portes du Soleil ski resorts some 20 kilometers north of Chamonix as the crow flies, but not as the car drives, last week. We returned last evening. We'll take our car next time.

What an odessy.

We left the hotel to return to Paris yesterday with friends on the trip with us -- colleagues of my husband's from his hospital -- at 9:30 am in the rental car one of them had gotten in desperation, fearful that there wouldn't be a navette to Morzine, where the conference was actually taking place, and from where the bus to the train station in Thonon-les-Bains was leaving at 3 pm, and arrived home to two very happy dogs, two cats trying to appear indifferent, and one very pleasingly pleased son at 11 pm. If you only count our departure from 3 pm, that was still at least 8 hours. It takes about 6 1/2 by car, traveling at the speeds of an adult with a full driver's license.

We had had navette issues in les Gets - Morzine since we arrived Wednesday night. So, Wednesday night's one was there, diligently waiting for us at the conference center in Morzine to deliver us to our hotel in les Gets 7 kilometers away, when we got off the bus that had met us at the TGV in Bellegarde sometime after 11 pm, but it seemed to be the last one on which we could count, at least when we'd need one. As it was, our companion on the bus ride Wednesday night from the train station in Bellegarde to Morzine was only gradually recovering in Audouin's company from his foul mood, the product of having been deposited by the 4 pm TGV from Paris in Bellegarde only to discover that there was no bus to Morzine there to meet his train, and -- the salt in the wound -- he was the only conference participant on that train. The next bus hired by the conference planners to take those of us arriving from the Paris area to Morzine was to meet our TGV, 3 hours later.

You have to actually travel to Bellegarde to formulate a concept of just how bleak this news is, and just how aggravated you would be, were you he.

The train station in Bellegarde sur Valserine is a step below ours in Mantes la Jolie. There is not even a kiosk selling newspapers and magazines, candy and gum. Nothing. There is only a ceramic-tiled tunnel connecting the several platforms, disgorging the passengers not continuing all the way to Geneva in a miniscule vestibule at the parking lot, where a closed hotel café showed how much Bellegarde cares to welcome its arriving visitors and own.

Actually, let's hope there is no relationship whatsoever between the availabilty of hospitality and Bellegarde's interest in seeing people travel there.

There might have been benches upon which to sit. There was a cart selling sandwiches, and Antoine counted the numbers of each of the three types available for sale -- jambon et beure, jambon et fromage, et fromage -- until there were no sandwiches, or no passengers to whom to sell them, left. About 15, he concluded.

"J'ai failli faire demi-tour pour rentrer aussitôt."

"Jusqu'à Paris?" I asked, amazed. Audouin had told me that he is somewhat impetuous, mais sacré bleu!

"Oui."

He had called our contact for the conference organization and explained the situation. Full of apologies, she suggested that he take a cab. The company that had invited my husband's group would reimburse him. He thanked her, refused politely and sat down to think. He'd checked on a taxi from Bellegarde to Morzine... 300 or 350 euros would do it, and this being France, he was shocked, amazed, scandalized and refused to pass such a bill along to the company paying our way. Somehow, he summoned the calm and the resources to withstand 3 hours waiting as night fell in a drizzly Bellegarde evening.

This unpropitious beginning summed up our transportation woes for the remainder of our stay in the Haute Savoie sans voiture, ending with our missing several possible hours of skiing on our last day, yesterday -- for which we had acquired passes -- for fear that we'd never get to Morzine and our bus, only to hear from the conference director that we could have had a navette to bring us at any of the times we had needed one.

Merci.

"Mais vous ne le saviez pas?" she exclaimed, dans un état d'étonnement.

"Mais non."

"Thierry vous n'a rien dit?" she asked, full of wonder and amazement. Thierry was the maître d'hôtel at our hotel, said to be worth the distance from Morzine for it's quality, as well as the more charming nature of les Gets, certainly smaller than Morzine these days, anyway.

"Non, Thierry nous a dit qu'on pouvait vous appeler, sans préciser que vous l'avez informé depuis ces derniers 12 ans qu'il n'a que de nous appeler l'une des navettes du congrès." It appears that the succession of front desk attendants at La Marmotte over the last 12 years that the conference has housed people in this hotel has caused a failure to communicate the precious information that their guests attending the Conference of Fetal Medicine are to be transported between the hotel and Morzine at times other than before breakfast has scarcely begun to be served and after lunch time and corresponding with their needs and convenience, within -- of course -- reason.

"Comprenez," she sought to make herself clear, "on a eu une dame une année qui a fait appeler une navette du spa dans son hôtel pour l'amener à Morzine dans une demi heure, et ça -- ça, vous comprenez, on ne peut pas gérer, mais de vous amener à l'hôtel pour vous changer pour le dîner et vous ramener à Morzine ou vous descendre pour prendre le car à la gare c'est tout à fait autre chose!"

Ah bon. It seemed that Thierry had indeed failed to communicate to his reception staff this most critical information, but worse, we let her know, he seems to have forgotten after all these years himself, for we had asked him, and he seemed to be convinced that there would be one navette and one navette only, and this would entirely prevent us from profitting from our final day.

"Il n'y a même pas une navette du village qui circule entre les Gets et Morzine?"

"Peut-être à 13 heures, Madame, mais il est dimanche et je ne sais pas si l'information est toujours bonne pour le dimanche." It was difficult to comprehend that this charming maître d'hôtel, who has directed service at La Marmotte these last 7 or 8 years, was neither familiar with the schedule of buses between les Gets and Morzine, nor offering to check his information to be certain to better inform us and be of service, either to us or to Madame Bidas, but such was the evident case.

"Vous pouvez appeler Madame Bidas," he offered, with great concern and attention, "J'ai son numéro à la réception."

"Non, c'est très gentil," I said. And très insufficient, I thought.

It couldn't possibly be a tremendous hypocrisy because our group was largely Moroccan, Lebanese and Benini doctors possessing French citizenship, could it?

Let us hope not. This seemed to enter no one else's mind, so let it leave my own. He had been so very attentive, and charming.

Our transportation woes were only completed by not only having spent from 10 am to noon, sitting in the emptying lobby to the conference, as the various manufacturers of diagnostic equipment, tampons and gel douche for "sensitive areas" representatives packed their brochures and equipment, loaded their vehicles and left us more and more to ourselves, while we waited for a pizza lunch we'd as happily skipped to ski had we known that we could have had a navette later in the day to make the 3 pm bus to Thonon, but by learning once we finally made it to Thonon that our change in TGV reservations had not been confirmed. We did not have seats on the train. No one had bothered to confirm that the travel agency had actually made the change once the organizers informed our group's inviting company representative that there was no bus planned to take people to our station -- Bellegarde again -- for the return trip to Paris, but only to Thonon-les-Bains.

So much for our first class seats. And, we'll just need to get remimbursed. Oh, remind me to tell you sometime of the attempted and of the successful theft on the RER C we witnessed, on our way to get the car in Viroflay from Gare de Lyon. Oh, yeah, and then there were the gendarmes' cars blocking the entry to the bit of road along the Seine in Méricourt as we neared home.

"Ca doit pour les gens qui viennent se garer et boire plus loin."

"Je sais, je les vois --" I started to say "when I walk the dogs in the evening," but I thought better of it. He'd already asked me not to walk the dogs alone after dark even there, along the Seine in our tiny villages. Yet, on the RER C he had said, "This doesn't happen in Mousseaux."

"Non, Ils ont seulment essayé de voler notre voiture, et ils ont réussi à voler les roues de la voitures des voisins dans la rue devant chez eux," I offered.

The trip? For all that, we had a wonderful time. I could see Grands Montets, imagining Argentière nestled at its feet, and Mont Blanc with the peaks behind le Brévent and La Flégère across the Vallée Blanche on the side where I stood, from the top of Ranfouilly, and as much as I wished that we were there, this was skiing that suited my husband better, with reds that are more like the blues of Chamonix, and he was so happy to be able to take me there that I was only to happy to sacrifice the challenge of the trails and see him actually enjoy himself on them, rather than in the banks along their sides, ski tips pointing akimbo.

And, upon our return, a garden offering the first tulip bloom, still more saxifragia flowers, and the opening of the Euphorbia ones. Now, to figure out how to -- and if I can -- save the camelia. It's looking really bad.

Oh, God, I forgot to get bread at the boulangérie, and it's too late. I always do this in the first days of the end of daylight savings time. It's too light out for it to be time for the stores to close. I spent the whole afternoon (finally) reading Dreams From My Father. Anyone who has read it already understands why it's the best excuse for forgetting to go to the boulangérie, alongside sunlight still bright on the garden outside the windows after 7 pm this far north.

What am I going to tell my husband? I can't pull out that worn explanation that I was tricked by the longer day to think it was earlier... Um, je me suis habituée de sortir en restaurant?

I'm in trouble now.

C'mon, dogs, lets go for a walk. It's still light out.
....