Le Couvent Diary

Some years ago my mother and her late husband, John, were on a cruise in the Mediterranean. She didn't much like cruises but John loved them. On the wall of the ship was a quote from The Olive Tree by Aldous Huxley. It meant enough to her that she copied it into her diary.

A few weeks ago I spoke to her about the sadness I had felt at hearing olives being wrenched from the land adjacent to ours. The tenant of the land was removing four of these noble trees to the garden of his new pink villa on the edge of the village. They were magnificent 100 year old trees, wide enough to hang a hammock in, but he set about them with a chainsaw before the digger hauled them from the earth with chains. I heard them scream and had to walk away.

When I spoke to her about it Mum was reminded of the piece, and without a word to me set about finding the relevant diary. Then she and her lovely helper, the divine Tara, plotted to find a copy of the Huxley book. Tara searched the internet, found an excellent 1937 copy in Sussex. She ordered, received, packed and posted it to me here in France, along with Mum's original note torn from her diary.

Here it is.

'If I could paint and had the necessary time, I should devote myself for a few years to making pictures only of olive trees'

I like to think that the spirit of olive trees links my mother and I.

 

If you're free in February 2009 and you fancy a heap of hard work in exchange for free bed and board, we're running two Volunteer Weeks . We haven't done this before, but we have had some wildly successful volunteer weekends and now that we're in danger of using up the goodwill of our friends we're hoping to spread the net a little wider. Our friends tell us they have loved the weekends, so we hope you would too.  If you're interested follow the Volunteer link on the menu at the top of this page, or click here .

We've had our lovely Cambridge friends Sarah & Dawn visiting for the past three days. No-one gets to stay while Le Couvent is closed during the winter unless they put in a bit of work, so they pruned olives, bushwhacked thistles and planted salad & strawberries.

 

Their reward for all this work this was taking us out to lunch in Meze where we had stunning shellfish looking out over the sparkling sea. The Picpoul de Pinet was almost a finely chilled as the sea. Ali & I passed on the latter. Our sweet guests got soaked, but reckoned it most refreshing.

Hope you got home safely - come back soon eh? Happy birthday Sarah!