This in fact is a piece of a blog entry of mine from September 2008.

I am reminded of it everytime I look into M. Sanquery’s Winery from the terrace.

And this is the Castor Oil Plant.
(a small explanation is necessary)

Since then M. Sanquery’s wine making area has been known as “The Castor Oil Plant”

Last evening Sile’s French choir gave an excellent performance of The Seven Last Words of Christ by Dubois in the chapel of Chateau de Cassan.
It was a terrific performance, the choir were in great voice and Dubois’ piece, as well as having some rousing chorus singing has a baritone, tenor duet to cherish.
I have, of course, become involved too with the choir so was checking in the tickets at the door.

After the performance we noticed a Dublin registered car in the car park and that is of sufficient rarity here, at this time of the year, that I went and introduced myself.
It was a couple, much like ourself, recently retired and now hopping between homes in Ireland and France. Their French house was in Pezenas, about a half an hour from us.
Despite their D reg car they were from Glamire in Cork and yes, you are there before me, himself and myself were in the same class in Christian Brothers College in Cork all through secondary school.

The smallness of this world constantly amazes.

Flicking through the various web pages which feature tourism in the Languedoc I came upon one called JustTour France which is translated into English.

It contained this astounding piece of information about Marseillan Plage.
(It has a long, long sandy beach, but….)

Marseillan Plage:
Marseillan, between Agde & Sete,
34200 miles of fine sandy beaches for all the family

We are having miserable bloody weather here in the Languedoc for the past week.
Cold, wet and windy.

All my friends in Ireland think this is hilarious.

To comfort us all I made my favourite soup, or at any rate a variation of the same. It exists in my recipes as many variations of lettuce, peas and herbs, any one of them work so long as you keep some essentials in mind.

1. Have some good homemade chicken stock on the ready.

2. Cook the onions, spring onions, leeks, potatoes (which ever or all you are using) slowly, very slowly in butter in a covered pot to gently sweat out all their sweet flavour.

3. Then and only then add the stock and increase the heat.
When the pot is boiling hard add the peas, the lettuce and the herbs and then just let it come back to a hard boil.
Take it straight off the heat and liquidise it (or push it through a sieve.)

When you reheat it do not let it boil for long on the hob or you will lose the invigorating colour and the fresh savour.
The French call the soup Potage Pere Tranquille (as I have said before) and I find the eating of it certainly makes this father (in this weather) way more peaceful.

As I have already told you the method I will list only the ingredients used but do be adventurous, lots of other green spring ingredients will also work.

Green Soup.

2 Bunches Scallions (Spring Onions) -chopped
2 onions-peeled and chopped
1 Large Potato-peeled and chopped.
75g. (3 oz.) Butter

I ltr. (2 pints) Chicken Stock.
175g (6 oz.) Frozen Peas (or fresh should you find them, but then cook them for longer)
Bunch fresh Chervil (or Mint or Basil)
1 Large head of Butterhead lettuce well washed.

That amount should give you enough for 6 to 8 (it will easily take another mug of water before liquidising) providing you can persuade them not to come back for seconds.

Thank you Petra for sending me these beauties.

Among conservationists there is a lot of controversy about the restoration job which the archichet Viollet-le-Duc did in the 1850’s in Carcassonne above.
The conical tops with which he crowned the towers, even though greatly admired, are thought to be not authentic and not the way they would have been originally topped.

Síle, seeing similar conical tops on the towers of the Chateau de Margon(see last entry) asked the guide were they original.
He equivicated, and said the Viollet-le-Duc had done some great work, but admitted that some of his people had been involved with the restauration in Margon.

Yesterday while searching for some more information about the place I found this old post-card from (I would hazard a guess) around the 1900’s.

I can’t see any conical towers.

It looks like Carcassonne was not the only castle to be crowned by our Viollet-le-Duc.

We were in Pezenas today with our current visitors (beau frere Brian and belle soeur Beth) at their huge Brocante Fair- at which we bought nuttin’ but they managed a nice garden table- when Síle decided to drive home on a whim via the village of Margon which has a remarkable chateau in its heart.

If we go cross country to Thezan it is on our route and-even though the chateau is closed to the public- is interesting to walk around.
As Brian and Beth are both archaeologists we thought they might like to see it.

We were strolling around the castle and I was photographing the still stained wall under a medieval privy when a pleasant lady of the village stopped to chat.
(Something not at all uncommon in France)
She told us that now the garden and part of the house was open and we only had to ring the bell to get a tour.

When we got to the front we discovered that the park of the Chateau was indeed now open and now it had a government sign saying it was “One of the Most Remarkable Gardens in France” furthermore we discovered that free guided tours were available should we ring the bell.

Now this struck me as bizarre, we had just walked all around the castle and, frankly, there was no room for a garden, however remarkable.

Inside however we were shown a little of the castle, a nice frescoed music room and a tiny chapel with my favourite saint in flagrante.

Then we were brought again out of the castle.
(Giving us a chance for another look at the gargoyles)

Pleasant enough monsters under the windows.

But some truely nasty pieces of work elsewhere.

We were then brought in through a door under a tunnel by one side of the chateau (through we had previously passed without a thought) into a really magical garden.

We discovered that the steps from the chateau to the park went over this tunnel.

It was huge, walled and had just about everything, lawns, a maze, herbs and vegetables, a swimming pool, an olive orchard.
It seemed to stretch for miles and yet remained within the village.

A truly magical secret garden.

Today in Chateau Margon

This week Nostalgie, the French oldies radio station, is playing a “Flower Power” weekend, almost exclusively dedicated to the songs of San Francisco of the 60’s
Radio Classique is playing huge amounts of Bernstein and Copeland.

Coincidence ?

Je pense pas.

It seems to me that the French public are being warmed up for an intensification of Entente Cordiale with the United States of America, spearheaded by M. Sarkozi’s wooing of Mr. Obama.