Gardening - Practice
Everyday Gardening
A garden in France is the largest room you own, and for half the year it is where you actually live. Springs that arrive in March, evenings in June that stay warm and light until ten, whole months when lunch indoors would feel like a mistake.
So you eat outside. That is the heart of it. A table under a tree, changes the shape of a day. Coffee goes out there in the morning, the apéro goes out there at seven, and somewhere between the two you wander down to see what the tomatoes have done since yesterday, which is the entire sport of the thing.
Then there is what the garden gives back without being asked. A cherry tree that buries you in fruit for two weeks of glut and jam. Lizards on the wall. Swallows working the evening air. The smell of warm box hedge and someone else’s woodsmoke.
You do not need to be a gardener. You need a chair, some shade, and the willingness to sit still while France happens around you.
