Oh Provence

Last weekend we made an escape down South, as we do pretty much every year around this time, mainly for wine but also to fetch spring home. Basking in the sun and first alfresco dinners, admittedly wrapped up in a warm blanket but still, alfresco. Rosé and fougasse and fresh goats cheese. First strawberries of the season. Cherry trees a sea of flowers.

Even a few days make such a change, and one can recharge and get the winter dust out of one’s system, spring cleaning for the soul. Also there’s something otherworldly mesmerising watching an olive grove in the breeze. This winter, I find, has been exceptionally harsh, what probably with moving house around winter solstice, our beautiful new house, yet left uninhabited for such a long time, damp and cold and neglected. Living here during the last months reminded of my first winter in the French countryside, in my little cottage, snug as a bug but oh so cold, and looking back to those memories of me seemingly constantly dragging logs into the kitchen while the cold stubbornly clung to my legs. But then also the last years have been exhausting, really so exhausting. So much has changed, also for good, so many things have changed for good in fact, yet a lot of change to handle.

Now for the Easter holidays, which are wet and cold but that’s rather normal I find, and then, then spring! Here’s the spring preview from my Provence weekend: