VAUCLUSE DIARY

Thursday 30 April 2020

So here’s the end of April upon us. What, I wonder, will May bring? We look around at other countries, to see how the slight tweaks they are making to their confinements are working out. I’ve begun listening to Cuomo, the governor of NY state, who is a fine communicator under the present circumstances, less formal, more ‘one of us’ than the French executive, whose manner of handling what must be a very difficult situation, I for one have also admired. There are politicians in this country that I am glad are NOT in charge.

Meanwhile…having read that asparagus growers who normally send most of their crop to fine restaurants are almost giving their crops away locally, we drove two towns southeast yesterday to one of them and came home with a kilo of white asparagus that was absolutely delicious. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten freshly-harvested asparagus before. We were able to stand in a building and watch a worker load dirty, ill-assorted stalks into a machine from which the stalks emerged clean, sized and peeled and ready to be shipped—except no, they won’t be shipped. Thus it was that we had 3-star Parisian restaurant asparagus for supper.

And for desert, strawberries picked that morning, with some left for today’s lunch. No need to wash them, the seller said, no pesticides. They were small, not the big, hard ones supermarkets sell in California, with a shelf life of who knows how long.

There were other things on offer too, such as new potatoes.

I roped my husband into helping colour my hair. We managed not to get any goop on the walls.