FIDELMA COOK

IN the fields the barley is being reaped and the huge harvesters dominate the narrow lanes, forcing you on to the verges which slope to the deadly ditches. The sunflowers seem to stretch another inch overnight and I can now see that, for the first time in a few years, Las Molieres will be surrounded on all sides by them.

My heart soars at the thought of their perky, yellow faces that seem to smile as one passes by.

And I try not to think of their all too brief lives before they blacken, their petals curling over as the heads droop in defeat, ready to be cut down. It always reminds me far too much of our own short strut upon this planet.

In the village, the latest entertainment this weekend is to turn the main square into a pirates’ park. Machinery and equipment has already started to appear and the posters have that primary-coloured, retro, innocent look that hurls me back to childhood and the stomachchurning excitement of the circus coming to town. The circus season itself has moved on to summer quarters and so I will no longer blink at the sight of a lugubrious camel chewing the cud close to Carrefour Express.

We’re now into full-blown fete time, celebrating the beauty and bounty of our terroir.

Homage is paid to the wine, the garlic, the hazelnut, the melon and the chasselais grape of La Lomagne. One of the joys in La France Profonde is to spend time with a small producer extolling his wares; black nailed fingertips proffering a perfect grape or morceau of melon with the pride of a man giving his woman a huge diamond.

I feel a similar, though entirely undeserved pride in settling in an outdoor chair, which I back into my lavender bushes.

Almost unconsciously my hand reaches up every few minutes to scrumple a flower head, releasing its perfume, bringing my fingers to my nose, then rubbing the scent on my skin to deter insects. The same sense of pleasure extends to the riot of ivy, jasmine, honeysuckle, oleander and flowers that every year grow thicker on the once ugly facade of LM.

I did this, I think. (Well the wonderful Alistair actually did but let’s not split hairs, or seeds.)

Occasionally I remind myself of its blank face by looking at the first photos I took. I try not to remind myself that I/we grew all this to hide the black damp and softening, crumbling render.

I feel a touching kinship with everything that flies and crawls and gently nudge them out of my way or remove them to a leaf’s edge. (Well, so long as they stay outside, that is. Inside, they’re over.)

This morning, one of the small birds that sings away in my guardian trees was dead outside my bedroom doors. No, I’ve no idea what species it was. It was cold when I stroked its beautifully soft little body, so I lifted it and placed it on the lid of the well. It seemed right somehow – perhaps some other creature would feast on it and extend its life-cycle.

In my dotage, and living in my field, I’m returning to the respect and wonder of childhood when I roamed Irish fields and knew what plants and leaves to use for sting and pain.

The days when we would find a dead crow and hold a full requiem mass before burial; hot coals in an old tin for a thurible; one of the boys, a sheet draped over him, solemnly intoning the Latin rites.

We acolytes, five and six-year-old hooligans, would pull mantillas over our heads and answer him with genuine belief in the bird’s ascendance to heaven. Actually, we’d bury anything we found simply to enjoy the pure theatre of it all.

That’s just reminded me too of how we used to use stones to mark out “houses”, little rooms created within the square; and use discovered shards of crockery to pretty up the sitting room.

We’d sneak triangles of bread and butter to eat at our tea parties, being careful to leave enough for the fairies later that day, so guaranteeing their gratitude and kindly thoughts.

Strangely, unless I’ve been speaking to the wrong people, there is no fairy tradition here, few ghost stories and little of the supernatural. I don’t understand it because they are as close to the breathing of the ground as ever we were and, like us, all those years ago, had the heady mix of paganism and Catholicism to fuel it.

I must pursue this further when the dark nights return and the lavender and the protective shield of growth retreat to renew itself for a spring which will surely come again. It is a thought for an uncertain future. A future made shaky by political events in the UK and right-wing opportunism throughout Europe.

When all seems lost, sometimes it is enough to rub a lavender flower, place a dead bird gently on the lid of an ancient well …

And to look forward to, and be grateful for, the first upturned, smiling faces of the sunflowers. Even for their brief time.