The reality

potager under snow 2010You are kidding:  a heavy snowfall in mid March. This is just not fair. I returned to France today to find the car under snow in the car park at the station and worse up on the plateau.   Where was my promising spring of just a week ago?

Under about a foot of the white stuff by all accounts. Oh the poor peas and beans and onions and garlic. All frozen. And no hope of getting my potatoes in the ground this week.   This cold snap is predicted to last for at least a week and I had such plans.

Still, at least it’s photogenic and fetching if you like winter.   But I yearn for spring. Yearn for some sprouts on all the seeds I sowed last month. I went up to the potting shed and my worst fears were confirmed. Ice blocks of compost and all the plants frozen stiff.   Irksome. house March 2010 snow

frozen lily pondAnd somewhere under here there should be lilies.   We will have to wait and see if there is any growth this spring. I am trying not to be pessimistic about this cold, cold winter; but it is trying even my boundless optimism.

But there is something frozen I can work with.   I had such a glut of fruit last year that I packed lots into tupperware and hid them in the deep freeze.   Time to haul them out and cheer myself up.   First up a batch of black currant jam which was fun.   And then the long and patient task of dripping the whitecurrants through a jelly bag and turning it into liquid pink gold. blackcurrant jam march

It is supposed to be a white currant jelly, but I left them on the bush so long last year (something to do with the inaccessability of the bush and the snagging brambles that sneak through the branches nearby) that they turned a lovely, irridescent pink.   And pink jelly it is.

White currant jellyOnly six little pots from 1.3 kilograms of fruit. Not the best yield, but they look such a treat I may keep them as cheer up beacons when I cannot stray outdoors and wield a pair of secateurs or sow some seeds.