You say tomato!

Some neighbours came round for drinks the other night and brought a basket full of tomatoes fresh from their vegetable garden (potager). Since then it's been tomatoes with, in and on everything. Not complaining. Just a statement of fact.  So many varieties, and so beautiful to look at.  Small reds, yellows, greens and maroon coloured tomatoes. Medium sized came in green striped, red, yellow and orange.

The biggest tomatoes were two types: plain red and another which had greeny black tones round the stalk. These were the softest and the juiciest. Had some with fresh basil and the most gorgeous buffalo mozarella cheese that we've ever tasted - from Chinon market.  All this reminded me of the B.T. television advertisement some while back with Maureen Lipman, who phones up a boutique and asks the hard-pressed and increasingly exasperated assistant about the colour range of a dress in particular size . . . 'Do you have it in the red?'. 'Yes Madam'. 'And the yellow?'. 'Yes Madam'. 'And what about the green?'. 'Yes Madam in the green AND in the pink'. No pink tomatoes, but our kaleidoscopic coloured tomatoes were so delicious, raw as well as cooked, and each had a very distinctive flavour.   

All our immediate neighbours have potagers and grow herbs and fruit as well as vegetables. Thinking about it, everyone we know between here and Chinon grows edibles of some kind or another. The garden as food source - to be able to pick what you need as well as when you need it - is the norm. In France for the moment we've limited our 'crop' to a small selection of herbs: sage, thyme, fennel and chives. We've no intention of turning into market gardeners - we don't have the time or the interest - but we do want to grow some lettuce and extra herbs such as parsley and basil. Perhaps even some tomatoes!

Norbert our neighbour, who I mentioned briefly in yesterday's blog, is a passionate potagiste. He spends hours every day, tending the fruit and vegetables and working the soil - unsurprising since his potager runs along the end of six gardens, including ours. He reminds me a bit of my father-in-law who grew the most sublime runner beans, some of which were popped into the deep freeze for Christmas Day. They were such a treat!

Seeing Norbert regularly in his potager has made us more aware of the seasons and the critical balance between rain and sun. The weather is a regular discussion point. When you're living in a community where produce is key, that's not surprising. At the moment the talk is of the wine harvest which should be starting about now. However this year the weather has been unkind. There was a bad frost in May which caught the wider Chinon area, particularly Cravant, quite badly. Then came loads of rain and not enough sun.  Out on the rando at the beginning of September, as we were walking amongst the vines, we could see that the grapes were tiny and not as advanced as they usually are at this time of year. So the harvest is going to be approximately a month later this year, which means around mid-October. It's not ideal. Gradually the wider concerns of our neighbours have become our concerns, as we've tuned into village life.