Ikebana Provence-Style
Désolé, pas de traduction française ; ceci est réservé aux lecteurs américains ;)
I didn’t really think much about how Ikebana was going to change once I moved. Well first off, there’s no reliable flowers from Trader Joe’s. I have to say, I miss that convenience, affordability, and decent quality already. Honestly, I just didn’t know what to expect. So far it’s absolutely gorgeous, walking around feels like a dream, we live in an enormous apartment in a slightly rundown château on a vineyard. But there’s not a lot going on. That part’s kinda tough. We’ve decided we’ll spend out time pretending to be pool boys. We work at night now, because of the time difference, so we need fake jobs to keep us busy (sane) during the day. It’s too hot to do anything but swim. The fountain/pool is as beautiful as it is gross as it is long (65 m, no joke). There’s a good 10 cm thick of algae carpeting the bottom. It’s a full-time job, we seem to make no progress no matter how hard we work. I shudder to think what it would be like without our self-appointed dedication.
Back to Ikebana. There’s only one florist in Apt that’s open semi-irregularly. Her flowers are as expensive as they are shit. Thankfully there’s a better florist at the market that has a relatively good selection, I just need to remember to go on Saturday. If I miss the market, I’m SOL for the week. There’s only potted plants at the Saint Sat market on Tuesday. I can’t remember when and where the other village markets are.
In the castle there also lives: a vine tender and a grounds keeper, a photographer, along with the owner Marie-Anne a curmudgeonly social butterfly (I think only the French can pull that off) who has been excommunicated from Avignon due to a cough which she claims is Covid but sounds like lung cancer through her thick cigarette smoke, and her high strung daughter Anne who is important and bouncing back and forth from Paris. I can’t go into details about the entire network of characters otherwise this will turn into a second book.
Point is, the chateau is broken up into apartments, we are on the top floor in the back. François, the vine tender, is married to the photographer, Sophie, who has her own apartment directly below ours because she doesn’t want to live with him since he’s an alcoholic and a slut (what they lack in entertainment they make up for with gossip). Sophie has been very busy spreading rumors about us, but in a charming way that is mean. All of this to say, François laughed at me when I asked him if there was plants in the yard that were off limits that I shouldn’t cut. He didn’t understand why I would want to make a bouquet with the random plants around, but he doesn’t exactly strike me as the sensitive type who would be inclined to those things under any circumstance. He told me to cut quote, “everything” including the grapes because the grounds keeper is slacking, and Anne is too cheap to replant the grapes so he is almost out of a job because the vines are too old to produce. Okay. I’ll take it. I will cut everything in sight and see what happens. There’s luckily pink oleanders in bloom right outside our door, so that can always be a backup option.
