May Day and Kittens in the home, Italy on the horizon

Happy May Day! This holiday, so tiny and rare in America, flowers like the wysteria, lillies of the valley (traditionally picked from the woods and sold and shared on May 1st) and lilacs into a big French day off for everybody. Barbeques, bike rides, long walks and rides in old sports cars abound.

We are doing well, having spent our morning harvesting fifteen trays of lovage that are currently in the humming dehydrator in the cellar. Lovage, a lovely neglected herb in America, was distributed in the sixteenth century as an aphrodisiac, and has been used for thousands of years as a digestive aide. It also makes a brilliant soup, of the sort that we have had the honor to taste many a time since being on Mount Salève.

Sadly, this is our last post from here. It has been so wonderful, and we both have much more to share and will do so from France. Matt (who wrote most of the entry on our Easter adventure weekend) plans on contributing a few posts on the food that we have encountered, and both of us are gathering so many ideas on agricultural whatnots that we are also interested in telling you about.

For now I leave you with the newborn kittens who are mewing and suckling in the wicker basket beside me, hands that still smell like lovage (somewhere between parsley and celery yet very distinct all the same) and a new knitting project. See you in Italy!

With Love,

Jenny