fev 5-8: Sounds of Valbonne

First, inspired by Tim's blog, I'm going to try to keep things a bit more orderly and give some structure by numbering my days, or at least noting the dates to which my entries refer. Thanks, Tim.

Even thought I'm sort of out in the country here, there are lots of sounds to be heard. First in the morning is the alarm clock on my running watch, better to use that which I can attach to the tubing of my bunk bed than the cell phone which I could knock off in the night. I've been waking up around 7:30 or 8am in order to have a good breakfast before heading outside to work for the morning.

I took my first run near here yesterday morning, and it felt like my panting breath must be audible for miles. There are some SERIOUS hills here. If I keep on like this I will be totally set for running in San Francisco. I plan to go for another one tomorrow.

On the way over to breakfast in the morning, my feet crunch on the gravel driveway. I've had coffee from the schmanzy Saeco machine a few times in the morning which grinds and spits out a very good little cup of French-style cafe.

I spent two day walking through the entirety of the 450 olive trees here and labeling them with last year's harvest. Labels are on little slates with white pen which have a tendancy to break their string and fall off the tree. It's a miracle I found some of them hidden under the dry grass. My work those days was accompanied by the sounds of the construction going on across the road. Apparently, 20 years ago, you couldn't see a single other house from the olive groves. Now there are quite a few, small, in the Cote d'Azur style with blue shutters and stucco walls that cover up the cinder blocks from which they are made.

Lots of the houses have dogs, too, which seem to bark at anything that moves. I'm told there is a big burglarly risk, so these dogs are not just for show.

My last two days have been spent on the edge of the forest on the property (still in view of olive trees and the, ahem, tennis court) mixing up compost. This is why I bought boots and not
shoes! I first raked out the pile of horse poo so it was more even, then forked dry grass on top, and finally got a lesson in using the rototiller. It was some seriously hard work, but the rototillilng was especially fun and challenging.
While I was working on this, Jerome, the French "chasseur," was busy felling some trees and then chainsawing them into smaller logs and burning the balance. (As a side note, there is lots of open burning here -- people clearing land, cutting trees. And while that's ok, apparently the EU is going to ban those heater umbrellas resaurants use?) So there was chainsaw buzzing, fire crackling, trees falling, and tons of little songbirds.

Today, no Jerome, but the sweet melody of hedge trimmers instead. There are gigantic cypress hedges on the property, at least 30 feet tall, and the landscapers were here today to deal with them.

There are also the periodic pops of shotguns in the distance as people hunt wild boar or rabbit. Little motorcycles blow by at amazing speeds, too.

In town, there are more cars, more French chatter. There is also English spoken, if only a little. At the patisserie yesterday, the owner could clearly tell I was not French and so started speaking English. It's a habit that annoys me to some extent since I would like to practice my French more. But maybe he just wants to practice English? I think I'm well-versed enough to carry on a conversation, and certainly to order a tart and piece of pound cake (which were both very good).

I also here a good bit of Tagalog, the Filipino language. I had another nice dinner with everyone last night, but I couldn't really understand a word of conversation. They all speak English quite well, though, and I had an interesting conversation with Noel yesterday over compost. It amazed me that he was aware not only of the fact that Hugo Chavez was president of Venezuela, but that he was a socialist and can't stand Bush. But as Tim noted today, it does seem that the average non-American citizen is a bit more informed about the world than the average American. Disagree if you want, but it certainly has seemed that way so far here.

I also got to hear Tim today via some free skype calling, and even a Taiwanese car horn in the background!

My rototilling seems to almost be over as the two empty compost bins are nearly full. Next week it's on to learning to prune with Jerome (more French spoken) and maybe spreading some of the extant compost on the olive trees.