Le Pub

Tuesdays is pub day. No, not the day we head off to our local for our drink , but the day the postman leaves a pile of advertising brochures – le pub – in the mailbox with our letters. We refer to it all as the weekly pictures of meat since invariably all the brochures [...]

Nodes and Nudes

I’m going to be gardening by the moon this year. I have my trusty handbook by my side – ‘Mieux Jardiner avec la Lune’ – and I’m ready to get started. But will it really make any difference?
Gardening by the phases of the moon stretches back thousands of years. Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) wrote [...]

February sayings and traditions

Here are a few wise old sayings from the February 1932 edition of La Prosperite a la Campagne:
Chandeleur noire – hiver a fait son devoir.
Chandeleur trouble – l’hiver redouble.
Black Candlemas – winter has finished its work.
Unsettled Candlemas – winter will redouble its efforts.
(I guess that by ‘black’ candlemas it means cloudy and not snowy. Candlemas [...]