An Afternoon at the Beach and Tickle's Health Check

A couple of days ago Tickle and I went down to our local beach. It was nice to resume that sweet habit that we had been neglecting over Autumn and the Winter months. We walked down the main road and then obliqued through the back lanes, past a cluster of houses, and then embraced the lowland and the marshes, checking the wildlife as we strolled along, an eye to the right where just above the lush pasture line, the blue of the sky meets up in conversation with the blue of the sea and both shimmer and mesmerize.

We took that little curved lane that gently and whimsically leads us to the beach, past myrtle bushes and other hedgerow delights. And then the path opened up to the shoreline, cluttered with heaps of dried up Posidonia oceanica, otherwise known as Neptune Grass or Mediterranean Tapeweed, a seagrass endemic to the Mediterranean sea whose clusters form dense meadows across sandy seabeds (at depths of typically 1–35m, i.e. 3.3–114.9ft). The grass sheds its ribbon-like foliage either naturally or during storms, that ends up shored up onto beaches into compact cushion-like stratae, resulting into heaps of brown grass deposits that we call 'banquettes'. Those might look disgraceful once piled up there on the sand but think what they look like under the sea when they are still attached to their clump, dancing to the current like a mermaid's mane hiding in its strands a rich sea life and oxygenating the water at the same time!

Tickle & Posidonia oceanica

I sat on the beach and Tickle laid down by my feet. And there we were, soaking up the views and the sunshine. My little companion is taking life in a mellower stride these days but it never takes long for the boisterous JRT natural instincts to spring up to the surface! Notwithstanding age is catching up with him somewhat. Although I will never know for sure his exact age, having rescued him as a young dog from the pound back in August 2006, I can only assume that he may be 10 and a half years old, maybe 11.

With this in mind, I took him to the vet's two months ago in order for him to undergo a full health check. In his case, he fell under the Senior Dog Health Check. He was weighed (just under 10kg, approx. 20lbs, which is ideal for a JRT), had a general inspection of his body, and a blood test. The vet was satisfied with the fact that Tickle had been on a veg-rich diet all of his life, which is now becoming more significant as he's reaching his golden years. Then off for a little dental clean: his teeth had a scale and polish under light IV sedation in order to remove built-up tartar which - if left unremoved - will bring a variety of ailments. The result was impressive as Tickle came out with Hollywood gleaming white teeth!

A scratchy nose?

Then the mutt had an echography to check his internal organs and, thank God, he passed with flying colours! All in all, he was given the all-clear except for one (currently minor) health concern: early-stages cataract. This has been creeping up on his eyes for the last 4 months, I believe. The condition affects most dogs as they age and leads to blindness if left untreated. I had noticed a very faint very localised clouding towards the centre of his lenses but this isn't noticeable unless you are actually looking for it, and there it was confirmed to me by the vet. She prescribed an Omega 3-rich fish oil treatment combined to an amino acid food supplement that both claim to slow down the onset of cataract and will keep my little friend comfortable. Eventually his eyesight will get affected to the point that eye surgery may have to be considered, as the only viable treatment to reverse cataract. It is a common practice nowadays with excellent results - if undertaken by a competent vet surgeon. Mine doesn't carry out eye operations but she would be happy to refer Tickle, should we wish to go ahead with the operation.

If you are a pet owner, I would recommend regular pet health checks, especially as regards life stages. In any case, once your pet gets to a certain age, I would insist you have them undergo a thorough health check and then keep up with bi-annual visits at the very least, or as per the vet's recommendations. In our case, we'll be back at the vet's in 4 months from now for a follow-up. In the meantime, we'll keep on enjoying the little pleasures of life, and our walks down the beach are definitely one of them!

Further Reading on Senior Dog Health:

• 6 Special Considerations for Older Pets by Dr. Karen Becker
• Causes and Treatments of Dog Cataracts by ibid.
• Jack Russell Hereditary Health and Average Longevity by Pets4Homes 

The Lambing Season

With the call of Spring only one week away and Easter a week after that, family gatherings are back on the menu after the post-Christmas interval. Now pardon me for sounding blunt and direct, but may I ask you a personal question: How do you like your lamb?

Cory Weber Photography, via Wedding Sparrow

No, it's not a strange question, and yes I do mean the cute cuddly baby sheep! Hmm, before the juices start running and baby onions start rustling up in the oven, you'll have me beg you to spare me the trimmings. Why? Because it just so happens that I like my lamb au naturel and with little else. That means I like it without the mint sauce and the garden peas, and the basting unless it's a typo and you mean 'basking', because I like my lamb basking in the sun (and not in gravy!). I like my lamb so much that it has got to run free through the herb garden and the potager, and across pastures new of tender grass, with no fear to be had, and a long life to look forward to. I am a vegetarian and I like my lamb alive!

Cory Weber Photography, via Wedding Sparrow

My lamb may lie on a carrot bed should its fancy be tickled by it, but not on a bed of steamed carrots. I shall be able to gaze into its eyes while calling it cute, and not have to bear the double standards once it has been slain and laid to rest on the Easter platter for all of us to share, cutting the chop and cutting away the idea that said meat belongs to an animal that we call cute and pretty and cuddly! So cute awww, it hurts! So huggable, it loses out in the food stakes, to the hug of the carnivorous diet...  

Pause and think: do you really need to eat a cute little thing like that little guy in order to satisfy your wondrous appetite? Or are you just getting so caught up in tradition and habit that you don't even realise what is going on on your plate anymore?

This coming Easter, may your 'Aww!' moment be your 'Aha!' moment. I'll meat you over the nut loaf.

Cory Weber Photography, via Wedding Sparrow

Cory Weber Photography, via Wedding Sparrow

Wait for it! There are more farm animal cuties to be seen, via exPress-o and A Playful Day! Meanwhile the story of a blind steer cutie called Oatmeal may well tip the die-hard meat lovers to forego steak for veg!

Foraging for Wild Asparagus

Wild asparagus season is in full swing in Corsica right now, and a demonstration of how giving and generous nature is to man, in all of our taking for granted of it. I had spotted a few asparagus stems around the village, tentatively tempting me to indulge in a little culinary adventure.

Fresh asparagus always gets me excited for two reasons. It heralds Spring (two weeks from now!), and is an indulgent delicacy (verging on luxury) that gracefully eases us out of the stodgy Winter veg dishes. Unlike its cultivated counterpart, wild asparagus is thin and lean! Long stems (whose tips are for picking) that delicately sway to the breeze in a semi-shaded, well-drained environment. I find them scattered at the feet of old olive trees.

Yesterday morning, with little Tickle in tow, and 'armed' with a paring knife, small gratin dish and camera, I went pottering about my immediate surroundings, on the hunt for wild asparagus. Oh, I did get distracted on the way there and back by those other tangible signs of Spring, purple daisy-like ground flowers that go by the name of Anemone stellata.

Then I spotted what looked like Morels. However not being a mycologist and not being able to ascertain whether those morels were safe and edible - or toxic - I resisted the temptation of picking them! Folks, the 'Better safe than sorry' idiom befits wild mushroom foraging to a cap, especially if you are no specialist!

Creamy Pasta Served with Wild Asparagus

Back home, I threw together a quick and easy lunch out of leftover plain pasta, simply plunged in boiling water and a dash of olive oil for a couple of minutes, then tossed in double cream, to which were added a small tin of sliced button mushrooms (my safe option to those unacquainted wild varieties out there!), the juice of half a lemon from Nice (+ a sprinkle of grated peel), salt, pepper and chopped chives. In a separate pan, I blanched the asparagus tips for five minutes, drained them and scattered them over the plated pasta. It was an ordinary meal with a little extra thrown into it, thanks to the fragrant, natural and organic asparagus that had been picked from the wild!

(pict source)

Monsanto: Deadly by Name, Evil by Nature

Would you trust a biotech company that once produced the notorious Agent Orange, a dioxin-based chemical warfare used to defoliate the jungles of Vietnam during the eponymous war, and which affected over three million civilians and servicemen in its deadly wake?

Would you believe a company that has managed to control Agribusiness by consistently investing an incredible amount of its profits in legal and financial teams in order to intimidate and bully governments the world over, buy out seed companies in order to kill off any form of competition and exterminate heirloom cultivars and the riches of the natural world?

A company that drives uncooperative farmers out of business, exploits those who are forced to comply under duress, silences mainstream media, sues corporations... and the U.S. state of Vermont...

(Venus Fly Trap) 'Seed Pods at Kew' photography by Andrew Withey, via Flickr

A company that is an aggressive world supremacist in seed engineering technology, plays God with biodiversity, eradicates traditional seeds, contravenes traditional cultivation methods and promulgates monoculture. It is part of the quadrangle of death and deceit, alongside DuPont Pioneer, Syngenta and Bayer CropScience, other major purveyors of hybrid and GMO seeds and crop chemicals worldwide. Currently No.2 in the world, Pioneer is vying the top seat and contemplating a strategic alliance with Dow AgroSciences that would counterbalance any Monsanto-Syngenta merger. Syngenta delivers crop protection and GE (genetically-engineered) seeds as per its 'More Food from Less Land' formula. Increase in yield and decrease in wildlife are guaranteed. The sharp decline in bees, a direct result of the use of Neonics and glyphosate in the pesticide/ herbicide industry, is incumbent upon the GMO biotechs! Bayer is behind 'Science for a Better Life', and science for death, as manufacturers of poisonous trenches gas during WWI, and later the deadly Zyklon B for the gas chambers (via their subsidiary). 

A company that produces the notorious Roundup, a powerful, highly-toxic carcinogenic glyphosate-based broad-spectrum herbicide that kills off every living organism (vertebrates, invertebrates and vegetal), bar its trademark ('Roundup Ready') crops - how convenient!

A company that is responsible for the vast decline in monarch populations in the U.S. as a result of the above, as wild milkweed (which the butterflies feed on) has been wiped off the face of the countryside!

'Milkweed' photography by Andy Goodwin, via One Eyeland

A company that wants us to believe in the greater good of GMOs, and gets the likes of Nestlé ('Good Food, Good Life') to purport the message, while we are told that Monsanto employees will NOT eat GMO food at the staff canteen...

A company that tampers with genetic codes à gogo, creates Frankenstein plants that cross-pollinate with nature and contaminate it, in effect compromising and irrevocably threatening organic produce...

A company that dispenses with and bypasses the necessary trials, careful research and ethical conclusions that would just put a stop to this diabolical experiment...

A company whose scope of activity spans the 4Fs of food, feed, fiber and fuel. Understand, not only cattle feed and the sinister cattle growth hormone, but also cereals, fruit and vegetables for human consumption... plus the cotton that clothes us (88% of the US production in 2009 was GMO!), and let's not forget biofuels!

'Morning Glory Harvest' photography by Renee Rendler-Kaplan, via Flickr

A company that has infiltrated the FDA to the top, bought out the U.S. government, and is working hand in hand with food multinationals to force-feed us its crap aimed at getting us sick in the long term, for the benefit of Big Pharma... This one's for you, Bayer!

A company whose business activity is nothing but ONE BIG CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY, legalised by the governments it bought out, and wreaking havoc with the natural codes of nature and life...

A company that is a huge player in the sinister U.N. Agenda 21 programme that has been designed for us - the populace.

A company that tampers with the natural order is evil incarnate, and the devil's industry of choice. Nothing positive can or will come out of it.

Monsanto has a lot to answer for regarding the shape of things to come, and consumers are in for a bumpy ride! Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Further Reading:

• Who Will Control the Green Economy?, a 60-page report by ETC Group
• Soy Story by CIWF investigates the devastating effects of Big Soy in Argentina. The extensive industrial soy farming monocultures yield cheap animal feed for the worldwide market. They come at the cost of land ownership (land grabs), ruthless deforestation, Monsanto GMOs, destroyed livelihoods and factory farming. More about the 'Green Gold Rush' from the Soy Story Trailer and Soy Story Podcast.
  
• Monsanto: The world's poster child for corporate manipulation and deceit by Jeffrey M. Smith, via Natural News
• Health Guide GMO Research by GreenMedInfo
• These 'Hired' Experts are Infiltrating the Media to Confuse You About Food by Food Babe
• GM Crops Facing Meltdown in the USA by ISIS (The Institute of Science in Society)
• GMO Foods Could Be Labeled 'Natural' Under Proposed Law by TakePart
• The USDA's New GMO-Free Label is a Gift to Big Food by TakePart
• Monsanto's Roundup Herbicide May Be Most Important Factor in Development of Autism and Other Chronic Disease by Dr. Mercola
• Independent Scientists Manifesto on Glyphosate by ISIS (The Institute of Science in Society)
• (16-Sept-2016 Update) Banishing Glyphosate, a compelling 90-page scientific study by ISIS
• Nestlé CEO Denies That Water is an Essential Human Right by Activist Post
• Getting Used to Less on Agenda 21 by La Baguette Magique
• The Uncontacted vs. The Disconnected by La Baguette Magique 

Field Day in the Garden

I'm living it up in the garden right now, and more specifically in that little spot at the back of my parents' land, a patch that includes a patio where I organically 'grow things' mostly in pots, a tiny potager next to it where I grow tomatoes and courgettes (zucchini), and an adjacent plot where... things, errm, grow by themselves.

English rose bush from a Cheshire garden centre

But let's start off with the potted garden... I have resurrected my dear old classic English rose bush (see above) that I brought back from Manchester in 2011 (I flew it back locked in my suitcase!). Admittedly the rose bush has had its ups and downs, having to adapt to Mediterranean temperatures, but this year it has finally rewarded me with a bumper crop of flowers!

Potted hydrangea

Aside from that, I'm looking after my mum's potted hydrangea, lavender and thyme (which we keep for purely decorative purposes). I am experimenting with cuttings (fig tree, myrtus) and seeds (Eriobotrya japonica and lemon), without success so far, except for the baby avocado tree, grown from a stone. I've also set up a miniature potted mint nursery. I've got some succulents too (aeonium) and a couple of paltry cacti from England that oddly enough used to thrive better in the northern climes than closer to the Sahara latitudes, fancy that?

Wispy lavender swaying to a light breeze...

Small and perfectly formed thyme...

Baby avocado tree, grown from a stone...

Arty aeonium!

The wild plants that grow by themselves do so to my folks despair, since to them a wild garden equals uncouth and neglect – oh, and I'm giving up trying to convert them to permaculture! That little patch of wild is - surprise surprise! - my favourite spot in the whole garden, as much for the kid in me revisiting that TV classic from childhood - Little House on the Prairie - everytime I amble across the tall grasses, but also as an opportunity to satisfy the botanist side of my personality and gauge what grows, what might be tamed, and how rich the soil is.

A male Philaeus chrysops (a curious jumping spider, check out his eyes!)

A cricket playing hide-and-seek!

Fibonacci in action!

The soil is dark, crumbly and fertile and teeming up with life forms (worms, tiny snails, ants, arachnids, bugs and creepy-crawlies of all sorts). My parents estate is located in the plains, hardly a mile off the coastline, on former agrarian land enriched by a compost of sorts, naturally made up of sediments deposited by the nearby mountain chain and aggregated with those from the nearby brook, and kept in fairly good ambient humidity levels, heavy morning dew, humidity from the sea rising at night to the back lands, and moisture trapped in the plains.

XXL Zucchini!

Additionally, the underground water reserves are plentiful, as testified by the plethora of stone wells that the elders built during the 19th century and which only dry up in Summer. My parents have salvaged three of those wells in the garden and all of them have been dredged and are in working order. I've had a few pleasant surprises around the wild patch: wild and lush passiflora, the incredibly fragrant garden mint and other aromatics (melissa, aniseed), chard, bird feed (plantago), cornflower, Queen Anne's Lace (a.k.a. wild carrot), rumex, thistles, bramble (sigh!) and more.

Wild and lush passiflora

Wild fragrant mint

Wild chard

All in all, I do find the gardening a pleasurable experience and a stress-buster. Likewise when I lived in Manchester. Getting physical takes my mind off the nitty-gritty. And sometimes I will just sit quietly in the grasses and observe life at work, butterflies, bees, roaches, ants - fascinating! And for me to keep busy around the garden is also an incredible fuel to my creative inspiration! Maybe you should get down and dirty too (if you're not already)?

Those don't drive me potty!

A Quick Fix to Happy

There is no denying, Spring is my happy season! And Spring means showtime down the countryside. Nature reveals itself to us: grass blades perking up under the rising temperatures, new shoots sprouting from branches, wild flowers unfolding gracefully and balleting their way to our hearts, casting shimmers, pimples, dots, or more dramatic circles of colours across the fields, prairies, verges, roadsides, hedges. It's a Jackson Pollock floral delight across the countryside!

Down the villages to the city, market stalls are getting interesting too. Perfectly-formed baby potatoes, new season onions, fresh and delicate asparagus, tender stalks of young rhubarb, nicely-presented strawberry punnets and freshly-picked cherries are all fighting for our undivided attention and titillating our culinary cravings. Flower bouquets are pulling at our heartstrings too, and to take one home is akin to taking a slice of Spring indoors with us. It's instant sunshine for the kitchen table or the dresser piece, an instant focal point and a shot of vividness that will brighten up our interiors. It's also a quick mood fix that will make us feel bright and cheerful! In the same way that chocolate does to us, ladies, in Winter... Yum-double-Yum!

Source: All photos via M&S. (1) Dendrobium Orchid Bouquet. (2) Cape Flora Bouquet. (3) Autograph Speciality Hyacinths. (4) Autograph Avalanche & Lisianthus Bouquet.

Total Recall - Doing Good for Food

Starting today and until next Sunday, we're gonna have a little fun in here, and I've called this Total Recall! As La Baguette has clocked well over 270 blogposts since coming to life exactly four years ago back in Manchester, I thought it would be a cool idea to revisit 40 articles (at the pace of 5 a day, easy-peasy!), organised per theme.

We'll start off our trip down memory lane right now with 'Doing Good for Food': food ethics, organic produce, sustainability, farm animal welfare:

• Honey, Please Bee Lovely! (25/03/2013) >> Of the importance of the bee and pollinisation, and how one UK company is doing its bit to raise awareness and help contain the decline of the bee population.
• Sunny Side Up with Origami Hen! (30/06/2012) >> Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) commissioned a short animation film to raise awareness on the horrors of those cheap supermarket chicken eggs, and how 'cost-conscious' consumers really get what they pay for in one simple equation, i.e. cheap eggs = chickens treated cheaply.
• Little House on the Prairie (27/06/2011) >> My first-hand personal foray into organic fruit and veg, via a work contract which I landed at a Corsican garden society, where ancient cultivated varieties are stabilised, preserved, cultivated and propagated, namely the highly sought-after Oignon Doux du Cap (the mild Sisco onion) and the Aubergine Ronde du Cap (a Firenze-originated round aubergine/ eggplant).
• On and Off the Magic Milky Way (20/04/2011) >> Lost in the milky froth of our trendy cappuccinos and fluffy Italian ice-creams, it is easy for us to forget how the cow is the most overworked farm animal, pushed to yield even more milk while often being prevented from the joys of motherhood, and ending up as steaks on our plates. Maybe it is time to pay the animal more respect than we do...
• My Organic Garden (19/10/2009) >> My modest contribution to the wordwide organic community, via my little suburban garden back in South Manchester.

I'm sure you'll enjoy the reads! And back in tomorrow for more, yay!

Technicolor on a Plate

Summer is a moment of pure delight, bringing a palette of flavours to our palate and a palette of colours to our plates. I couldn't help the tongue twisters and will go to any length to tempt those of you stuck in the takeaway/ processed meal habit to kick it and replace all that comfort brown food of pizza, pasta, burgers, fries, biscuits, chocolates bars, sundaes and the likes, with an injection of vitamin-laden light-hearted happy Summery colours of yellow, orange, pink, red and green onto your plate! It's not too late to embrace salad days still, so look away from the gummi bears and feast your eyes on these babies:

(via Grow Harvest Cook)

Think of all the fruit and vegetables currently in season... Let's start off with fruit in its many varieties - and you will spot my Mediterranean diet along the way: melon, watermelon, plum, apricot, peach, nectarine, fig, apple and pear (both just starting), raspberry, gooseberry, redcurrant, blackberry, grapes... and tomato and capsicum (which happen to be fruit also, contrary to popular belief that tends to categorise them under veg).

Talking of which, veg are just as plentiful as fruit: courgette (zucchini), aubergine (eggplant), green bean, runner bean (and other beans!), carrot, lettuce, spinach, onion, etc. So why content with monochrome brown when you can jazz up your diet and boost your health with a rainbow of colours and tastes! So make sure mealtime means a party in your plate and you'll even find yourself more energetic as a result, more inspired and in a happier mood! It's a winner!

How many figs can you spot from my favourite tree?

Multi-coloured Root Vegetables, via La Tartine Gourmande

Roasted Radishes, by Saveur

Hey, There is ONE Great Reason to Smile About!

OK, so NO you cannot change the world, but YES you can change YOUR world. You can change your world one step at a time, one habit at a time, one vision at a time, and make it a fairer place. Do your bit, recycle/ upcycle, reuse, go vegetarian/ vegan if only for one day a week, buy organic food whenever possible, grow your own fruit and veg, limit/ ban the use of chemicals at home, have principles as a consumer and stick to them (ex: not purchase bananas from banana republics, boycott unethical companies, never wear fur), pick up random plastic waste from the beach everytime you go for a walk (think of all those grateful sea creatures!), give a rescue pet a chance by adopting it, turn someone's junk into a treasure, get creative with those discarded wood pallets!

DIY Reclaimed pallet wood sign (pict source)

Swallow your vanity a notch and skip those designer coffees on the go served in styrofoam cups, and get extra mileage out of your existing mobile phone instead of rushing down the bandwagon to the latest all-singing all-dancing smartphone... Remember - what is trendy in the moment will be out of trend in the moment that follows (erm that's roughly within a week of purchase!).

Huh, I'm not asking you to be(come) boho, by the way - am I 'eck? Just to do your little bit by stretching slightly out of your comfort zone (no bungee jumping involved!) to show the planet that you DO care. I know you do.

And remember, a collective of little bits, that's a whole lot of a big bit! Ingenious!

Little House on the Prairie (Part 2)

My new work assignment allows me to feel blessed by the beauty of the surrounding countryside, the rambling valley encased in lush hillsides, age-old hamlets suspended in time, a nearby brook...

The preservation society's gardens deserve a mention too. Although still looking neglected in places, they are set to enjoy a revival thanks to our new chairman. I too am pushing in that direction: on my visit last year I hadn't been impressed by their state of semi-neglect ('semi' used as a polite word).

The gardens are organic and multi-purpose. Part of the site is dedicated to the preservation of ancient cultivated fruit and vegetables (old varieties of onion, leek, tomato, peach and apple trees), by the means of a seed bank (conservatoire de graines). Besides an on-site greenhouse offers garden members the possibility to purchase tomato, aubergine, courgette, onion, aromatic herbs and capsicum plants. Visitors - especially those unacquainted with country life - discover a working kitchen garden and the orchard. Fruit is collected and used into the popular compôtes, jams and preserves, syrups, sauces, chutneys and the likes that will eventually find their way to the boutique shelves.

Finally the semi-wild garden is also a representation of what the maquis stands for up close and personal, in its full spectrum and informality, from the low grasses to the medium-height cytisus, heather, genista, myrtle, up to the taller grades of the scrub: green oak, cork oak, pine, wild olive trees, etc. The gardens are a taster to botany without the stuffy science bits.

Promenade en Corse parmi ses Fleurs et ses Forêts, by Marcelle Conrad

By its nature, the garden is not supposed to be compared to those formal, regimented, weed-free, stately gardens like Chambord or Versailles, or even to the falsely wild yet incredibly romantic Monet's gardens at Giverny. Here in 'our' garden, wild flowers take pride of place and are encouraged. The difficulty lies in the fact that all too often our gardeners tip-toe on that very fine line that separates wild from neglect. 

While most of our visitors seem genuinely charmed by the rusticity of the gardens, some will understandably express their concern about a certain lack of care, while a small minority will virulently oppose anything that doesn't resemble geranium, begonia, dahlia or petunia... Although it is clear that those individuals got the wrong address in the first place, I am quick to add in their defence that part of the garden preservation society's mission is to endeavour to change perceptions and preconceptions towards plants, weeds, the cultivated vs. the spontaneous, and the concepts of balance, beauty and acceptance.

Organic produce is available to purchase from the boutique

Therefore garden guardians have a long task ahead, yet this is a challenge that I am relishing in. So who's next please?

Little House on the Prairie (Part 1)

I might make a few envious amongst my readership as soon as I reveal to all of you guys that I am currently working for a garden preservation society! This new chapter in my curriculum is practically a match made in Heaven as it combines personal passions and hobbies: botany + ethnography + ecology + interest for the island of Corsica + the more pragmatic commercial flair.

Commercial flair is a driving force to any business and in this case it is not so much in relation to the business itself whose status as a society makes it reliant upon various state subsidies and the generosity of private benefactors, than tapping (further) into the revenue potentiality offered by the on-site organic delicatessen and healthcare/ beauty boutique.

With a new chairman at the helm, an established down-to-earth entrepreneur with solid business acumen, the garden society is set to sail towards a more promising future. I have been tasked with shop management, stocks, pricing, supplier relations, advertising and the sales experience whereby the customer receives a personalised '+1' service that goes beyond the sell/ purchase transaction. Without meaning to sound pretentious, I would be enclined to say that this is something I am good at and I am loving the challenge!

My secret? Just plain common sense really. I personally believe in, understand and praise the benefits for each and every single product for sale in the boutique. I have used most of them and my advice is no push-to-sell pitch. I am not commissioned by either the brands I sell or the society itself, and I certainly don't have the mindset of the ordinary sales person who clocks in and clocks out and painfully chews their bubble gum looking glum for the time in-between, while wishing their life away day after day... Hey, what a waste for both employer and employee: there is some urgent need for a career change!

Each customer deserves my full attention, because this is the way I would like to be treated and acknowledged as a customer. A customer has every right to enjoy and remember their retail experience, and it is the shop floor sales' objective to make that experience pleasant, memorable and meaningful, whether the customer buys a jar of cherry preserve, a case of premium wine, or a basketful of groceries and essential oils.

A smile works wonders too. Maybe some shop workers out there need reminding about the power of a smile, acknowledging the customer and showing that you care, that you're there. Besides I always have advice to hand, ideas and suggestions on how to use those compôtes, chutneys, dried herbs or myrtle essence, even anecdotes about plants, land, weather, Corsica, the economy, you name it...

All in all, you can imagine that I am not stuck for words: just take a look at La Baguette and you get a pretty good idea! (to be continued)

Spring Snapshots

Of all four seasons, Spring is my all-time favourite. And although each season holds it in the charm stakes, Spring holds it together better in my heart. In fact, if the four seasons made up a perfume, Spring would be its basenote.

The sweet smell of (Spring) success: hawthorn

For me, Spring signifies the true commencement of a new year, unlike 1st January, because it symbolises birth - rebirth even - renewal, nature waking up. It symbolises life and a new beginning. It encapsulates the anticipation of exciting things to come, it heralds the end of Winter drab, and the longer milder days and shorter nights. It holds the promise of Summer, those long lazy vacational Summer days that fill us with simple carefree joy: picnics, gathering with friends, garden parties, music festivals, pottering about in the garden...

Spring is promising on many fronts, and it is also a floral revelation - be it in the garden, the local park, the countryside around us. Simple little moments of happiness in my experience, like witnessing a sprinkle of crocuses across a lawn, a bright yellow sparkle of daffodils down the grass verges of nearby Mobberley (Cheshire), the beautiful white lilac in my front garden making me proud by displaying its floral scented best to all and sundry, trees getting dressed up in a variation of tender green leaves, wildlife busied up chirping, building nests, raising youngs.

The poppy patrol: papaver

Spring provides some of the finest, most delicate garden produce: asparagus, artichoke, lettuce, radish, herbs, strawberries, cherries, rhubarb, medlars... And of course those fine Jersey new potatoes that make up the best salads! You can't get bored in the kitchen in Spring thanks to all those fine cooking possibilities!

Spring makes us ladies yearn to be prettier and lighter, discarding scarves, shedding clumpy attire, instead revealing dresses, sporting shorter sleeves, showing off bold colour schemes, daring bright patterns, flaunting floaty/ see-through fabrics. Spring is simply inspirational. It gets us out of houses and out and about, out there in the open.

Part of Ralph Lauren's Blue Label womenswear collection

Spring by name and Spring by nature. It is, in my eyes, like a metaphorical springboard, filling me with energy, with ideas, with enthusiasm. It is invigorating and regenerating like a citrus-fresh fragrance.

Everything seems possible in Spring, everything looks rosier, lighter, smoother, happier. It sounds terribly cliché to say but Spring makes me spring into action, it's when those long-forgotten foggy New Year's resolutions from weeks and weeks ago suddenly rush back to the forefront and enthuse me to act on them. A good Spring clean, not solely in domestic terms, but also as regards matters of the mind, addressing those things and people and actions that bug us and delay us and drag us down. And to get on top of the tedious long put-off paperwork and those other chores at large.

Christian Dior's Escale à Portofino: so fresh!

Ideas pop up, start coming together as by magic, they materialise, see the day of life. Spring gives me strength, it clears my head. And my favourite month in Spring? You might have guessed, it is right now - May!

And by the way, what is your favourite season, and why?