How many times have I passed this old oak, caressed its craggy bark and velvet moss, wondered what it would feel like – to be this tree. For a day, a year, a century. From fragile young shoot vulnerable to pests, to struggling sapling prey to deer, to vigorous adolescent invincible and insouciant, to robust young adult casting the next generation, to wise old one, to ancient one… To be inside and feel my feet become roots and explore the soil, to feel my arms become branches, leaves, limbs, a crown. To feel my bark develop armour […]
Author – Mary Bruton Sandifer
12 posts
My favourite gardening magazine provides a handy “to do” list for each month: when to prepare the soil for the vegetable garden, when to cut the specimens for tree grafting, when to distill the slurry of stinging nettles… In September we add the frenzy of harvest and in October the frenzy of the fermenting wine. Some years ago, when the November magazine arrived, I hesitated to open it. The malolactic fermentation had finally finished; the wine was “done” and pronounced good – a big relief after the usual weeks of worry. What I certainly didn’t need that […]
My grandfather’s grandfather was a serf in Poland in the early 1800’s. I suppose he wasn’t an ordinary serf, if that isn’t an oxymoron, because he was a manager. But an economic slave nonetheless, owned in most ways, owning nothing. I was reminded of this ancestor when I found Julien pruning in the vineyard last week. Pruning and ruminating: “I look up and see an ocean of vine plants pleading for care, costs rising, climate change, Bordeaux wines in crisis and the world at war.” There was no easy repartee to this dark version of reality. So […]
Last night came a letter from cousin Quentin in Texas. It brought back a moment decades ago when Julien, then ten years old, declared that history was boring. Quentin took him aside and in less than an hour explained the entire American Civil War. Julien ran back to us, “History is so exciting! I wish all my teachers were like that!” Today Quentin is a judge and a law professor. His letter spoke briefly of the issues we face today. And his confidence that eventually we’ll get sorted out; that the next generation will pull us into the light. […]
I love epilogues. The story ends but the fates of the characters haven’t been revealed. Then a bit like cheating, you flick the page and know the future. “Grapes and Old Stones.” Ten Years On. It’s Autumn again. Hot summer mornings replaced by cold, misty dawns. Harvest pressing upon us. The incessant thrum of machines echoing across the valley. This harvest marks ten years under our belt. In November Julien will officially join us as vineyard manager. A new story will begin. As befits endings, I went back to the beginning: 15 August 2011 “Be careful what […]
Much as life in the time of Covid-19 is a chapter I would like to omit, a valid chronicle doesn’t leave out the hard parts. A few notes for “Grapes and Old Stones”: Early March 2020. After a woefully diluvian winter, the first days of Spring. Delirious, we shed our rubber boots and venture barefoot over the paquerettes and dandelions. The baby eats the dandelion stems and we smile at his herbalist wisdom. We carry platters outside for the first family lunch in the sunshine. Carry tea and cake outside for the first little gathering of friends to shake away the […]
Years ago when the children were little, we bundled them up against the cold and rode our bicycles to the banks of the Thames. It was the darkest, longest night of the year. We brought hot chocolate, brandy, candles. I wrote a poem for the occasion. We stood in a circle, the river rushing below. In their shining, fresh innocence the children were completely present and sincere. If we believed, so did they. We lit a candle as each read his or her verse; our own private stage, actor and audience, creators of our own moment. Then […]
It’s high summer. The time of first fruits from the garden, long sunny days, kayaks on the water, cool starry nights, village fêtes, music rising from parties all along the river… Lavender time. When we planted the first row several years ago, I didn’t fully realize that lavender is much more than a flower. We knew of the medicinal properties against insect stings, and also hoped to deter some mosquitoes. But now, several plantings later, the spectacle of evening lavender has become central to the setting of high summer. Just before sunset is best. I sit on a broken old […]
Your Yoke of Fear I give you back your yoke of fear It’s broken now. Rent asunder, I am broken too I give you back your yoke of fear It’s broken now Useless, like the perverse turbulence that stirred up worst case scenarios In your imagination In your projections In your fury If only you had known then That it was in vain Useless Worse than useless. When real danger arose It kept you from dressing yourself in the very armor, The only armor That might have helped In those moments when yes, we must take […]
At first we were just ruminating and tinkering. How to entice beneficial micro critters into the soil; how to prepare potions from the “weeds” in the prairies… At first it was mostly amusing. Stumbling on Henri’s odorific jars of fermented vegetables in my linen closet (sauerkraut and the like for healthy gut flora); trolling a pasture for fresh cow patties to fashion a “praline” dip for fragile tree roots. Just trying things out, trying to find our north. In our ramblings, we sought out the rural elders. They proudly hobble around their havens of pre 50’s bio diversity, amidst beehives […]
Over the years we’ve lived so many stories on this land my journal entries could fill an 18th century armoire. In truth, La Tourbeille is such an out of world/out of time place, she should really be the subject of sonnets. Even the postman goes poet when he steps on the land. He brings extra junk mail as an excuse when he can’t fill the box with bills; he lingers and chats and reminds me every day that we live in a “magical” place. For sure, this is a place that makes people dream. Maybe that’s why I’m trying to write […]
Be careful what you wish for. They say be careful what you wish for, but I guess we weren’t. For years my husband’s wish was, “Just some grapes and old stones.” Mine: “A place for dreaming.” And then one day, there we were. Bound and shackled to the endless mending of centuries’ old stone buildings and risking our savings to revive a vineyard. One result is this almanac of what life has become; not exactly what we wished for, and not exactly what we would have wrought if we’d had the prescience to know what was coming. Marie (alias […]