The Champêtre Winds of Change
Champêtre- French Dreams March
Happy March Days! This is my first of the month newsletter that I write myself and offer free for everyone. I hope this inspires some of you to access the archives, read more, and become a supporting subscriber to The Camont Journals. This month, paid members will receive a 99-page seasonal ebook of A Gascon Year-Mars where we’ll run through the kitchens of early spring and I’ll share a cooking video of one of my favorite light lunches, an Omelet aux Herbes. The French respect eggs and they become an essential part of a family meal. Please enjoy my introduction to where the winds take me…
The winds of change arrive and with it, our own season of blossoming.
I wake to a brighter March sun and a restless night-dripping nightgown, dreams of old friends, long lost, and small details like a pocketful of stones and a table set with empty oyster shells. These become the seeds for March wind-influenced events like these:
Spring is here! Write it down and blow it off the page like sakura petals. Thoughts can be as ephemeral cherry blossoms, yet they return every season for another deeper visit.
Celebrate the daily openings of one pink bloom after another under a stronger sun, dew dried by the late morning wind.
Catch a beam of sunshine bouncing off an old stone wall and let it penetrate deep into your chest, warming your heart for another year of growth and loss.
These are the seeds of my internal garden. But as I turn my face to the blowsy sky, I know that the giboulées de Mars will arrive with wind and rain. Hail may fall on the netted apple orchards, and a howling wind will rattle the young blossom buds. Read more about the March effects that I wrote about here.
The wind, the wind, this wind!
Champêtre winds blow these March days throughout the Southwest of France. No, it’s not the Mistral; it’s called le Vent d’Autan, a strong wind from the southeast Mediterranean coast that typically blows one, three, or six days. I live as far west as the wind wants to reach, here in the Agenais, and while mild and dry at this time of year, it always portends rain to come from the Mediterranean Sea in a few days. Today's the skies look just like this beautiful Renoir painting! But I welcome the rain to come for the much-needed soaking of orchard roots and to prepare the fields for planting as much as I regret the end of these first warm sunny days.
After living here for so long, over 37 spring seasons, I have absorbed the French farmer's attitude of tsking and sighing when the weather changes. It is as regular as any ancient almanac predicts, and the local farm store—Gamm Vert—still sells a moon calendar for planting, by which I am usually behind by at least one moon phase. But the warmer days and nights this week demanded that things be planted under the growing moon and I have already sowed some seeds in kitchen window boxes; the zinnia sprouts have popped up in just a few days to be first in celebration as if to say “I win!” But nothing beats my beautiful flowering cherry tree that I planted decades ago, and faithfully welcomes spring before the Vernal equinox each year!
Interior Winds, Too.
But the winds of change don’t just describe the rains to come and the agricultural clockwork that dictates weed, sow, protect now. There is an internal rhythm at work in my French farmhouse, too. Cupboards need opening, linens need airing; windows are flung open to change the air in little-used winter rooms before the next Relais de Camont residents arrive on April first. The curtains will be changed to sheer linen as the morning light now streams from new/old angles to warm up the writing bedroom/studios.
Oh, and all the windows need to be sparkling, too! I have help for all this now, as in the garden, and I am so grateful to my proud housewife neighbor who keeps on top of things for me! My job is now to write here on Substack to earn enough to pay the hardworking physical labor I can’t easily manage now. While we age, we keep making new concessions and tradeoffs, but this is a natural change, too. Nothing remains the same; who would want that anyway? I'll manage as long as my brain is nimble and my energy is still spinning tales. I still have the vision of a common place to work, a carefully casual and welcoming rural home rooted in the deep clay of the Garonne River valley. As I write and manage my creative time, I invite others to come and walk the 300-year-old tile floors, too.
Change is afoot in my private living quarters at Camont, too. I am finally making progress on my private space—a sitting room/TV/office next to my ground level bedroom and garden terrace. Red-stained wooden bookcases are installed and lit, although the books have yet to be sorted and arranged. We’re painting the wall behind the television the same soft green/blue that I painted my small bedroom. It’s like an echo of the felted green color of the canal and poplar trees reflecting the Gascon skies. The blue/green and a soft coral red are present in the 18th-century printed linen curtains I bought from my textile-curating and photographer friend in Provence, Ruth Ribeaucourt. Ruth has a great eye, and I love the series of photographs she took of Camont a few years ago for a feature magazine. Over the years, I learned that one element often holds the whole look together. Learning to trust my own instincts, with a bit of help from my friends, has been a lifelong journey. I do know what I like and know I know why! Next, I will tackle the dog-friendly couch and find some darker/printed fabric to disguise the muddy paw prints!
When new residents arrive at the Relais, they seem to get lost with the multiple staircases and opening doors. But they quickly find their desk, window, bed, and kitchen table rhythm. One of our own Substack writers, Katie Harbeth, recently arrived for 2 weeks of winter work on her first draft of a new book, a memoir of her early days working at Facebook and her contemporary approach to social media and politics. Read more about Katie and her residency experience here—
Want to know more about the French country life, the food we grow, the slow choices that you can also make at home? Subscribe and join me as I take you through the seasons, recipes, ingredients, gardening, design, and certain French approach to life. Eh Voilà!
You write beautifully Kate, don’t stop. Becoming older can be sobering but it certainly makes one focus on what is really important and what isn’t. After sciatica last year, I do group physio sessions four times a week to maintain my mobility.
I love Ruth’s photos of your home at Camont, especially the cracked and age worn floor tiles.
Your tree is lovely! Going into my 29th March in Aveyron, I hate to report that it's a month that nearly always disappoints. A notable exception was the year of the lockdown. At our altitude, 625 meters, nothing has bloomed yet.