It is, of course, an absurd generalisation to say all French women are elegant, all Frenchmen great lovers (and vice versa), and that all French food is fabulous, especially with the fast-food epidemic ravaging French eating habits.
But let's pretend we are in a world where Coco Chanel epitomises a Frenchwoman's perfect sense of taste, and bouillabaisse tastes of sunlight and the sea, and every French household buys it's bread twice daily, because it is a crime to eat preservatives and bread in the same mouthful.
In this world - which does have some connection to reality - the French have three great garden secrets: French tarragon, broadleaf parsley, and bright red geraniums. I know those glowing geraniums are really a pelargonium species, but 999,999,999 people out of a million call them geraniums. You don't say 'Darling, I have bought you are lovely bunch of Rosa rubiginosa' unless your beloved is a pedantic botanist.
The first secret, French tarragon, needs to be home grown, as any bunch I've sniffed in the supermarket doesn't smell right. Tarragon is not aniseedy, though it's sometimes described as such (I don't like aniseed). It's tarragon, and there is nothing like it, certainly not Russian tarragon which grows like a weed and tastes vaguely green.
French tarragon is subtle. Add it to stock at the last minute, or a cream or cheese sauce, or chop it into savoury muffins or toss it into a green salad, stuff it in a chook's carcass before you roast it, or make the world's most wonderful sauce - a cup of freshly squeezed green grape juice simmered for 5 minutes with half a cup of King Island or other thick cream, with a tablespoon of chopped tarragon tossed in two minutes before serving.
Tarragon adds je ne sais quoi. It is the difference between being someone who can knock up a decent lasagne from some packet pasta and cans of tomato passata, and being a fabulous cook. French tarragon also needs a good gardener, because even with much care it will only last five years or so. It's best grown in a pot because it is easily overwhelmed by other plants, and kept in dappled shade, and watered when the soil is dry, and fed a little every spring and mid-summer, and picked often to promote lots of lush growth. A pot of French tarragon will delight any good cook - buy a small pot of it, transplant to a bigger, fancier pot, and voila! You have the perfect gift, because even those who love using tarragon have probably not renewed their plant after the last one karked it, and those who have never used it will have hours of delicious experimenting in the kitchen.
Tarragon is a summer secret - it dies down in winter. Flat leafed or continental parsley is an all-year wonder. Curly parsley is tough even when finely chopped. Flat leafed parsley is more tender, and you can throw whole leaves into a salad without finding you are chewing something with the texture of a dish scourer. I add flat leafed chopped parsley to almost everything edible that isn't already green. Chopped flat leafed parsley can become invisible - hide it from kids who don't eat enough greens by putting a layer under the other toppings on a pizza, or a sandwich, or lunchtime sushi or even (shh) in chocolate muffins. It will vanish in most stews, but its nutritional excellence and subtle flavour enhancing will still be there.
Plant it now, in full sun, though it will accept some shade. Feed and water parsley well and it will feed you well. Our household of two plus visiting friends and family needs about 20 parsley plants, but I cook a lot. I also use the food processor to chop my parsley.
Old-fashioned red geraniums used to be seen in French window boxes, against aged stone walls, in pots on steps - anywhere that needed brightening. Modern varieties bloom 12 months of the year even if you forget to water the pot for a fortnight. If you are feeling down, purchase two pots of red geraniums, or if broke, break off a branch of someone else's red geranium - or ask them nicely to do it for you. Plant the stem about 20cm deep in a pot or garden; water every second day for a few months, and by then it will have grown roots and be sending out new shoots and lots of flowers, so feed it gently and cut down the watering to once a week or so.
Potted red geraniums aren't just a French secret. I've found them in rusty tin cans growing in shanty towns across Asia, turning scavenged tin and plastic sheeting into a home, and on almost every step in a Greek village. Henry Lawson found red geraniums growing in the drought-stricken outback in the 1890s or thereabouts, and wrote about them in Water Them geraniums, about a desperate, overworked mother who had one small spot of beauty in her life - the pot of geraniums that got the washing-up water, or the water the spuds had been boiled in - as long as it was water, the geraniums would grow.
Our wallabies also love red geraniums - they find them delicious, which is why ours used to grow on the window ledge till this year, when over-enthusiastic macho male birds knocked off every single pot as they attacked their macho male reflection in the window. I still have two pots of red geraniums on the garden table, but it's not the same.
The geraniums rescued from the broken pots will be planted in the garden just outside the living room, by the floor-to-ceiling window so I can see them from indoors - unless the wallabies have chomped them. Maybe I should try them in hanging baskets next, though I don't like plastic ones, and the birds pinch the material from any fibre or wool-lined hanging baskets for nest building, so they look tatty within two years. Maybe if I try ceramic hanging baskets...
Next year. Perhaps.
This week I am:
- Cheering a brilliant purple-flowered hydrangea cutting that seemed to have died but is now leafing furiously, obviously well rooted and ready to plant out.
- Watering the new parsley plants.
- NOT planting any more veg except the ones I listed last week, till the weather settles into late spring warmth a bit more
- Trying to convince myself that our grass doesn't need mowing for weeks yet - but yours will grow more thickly and with better roots if you mow it now. You'll also be cutting the tops off any weeds lurking in the greenery. Hopefully they will die as your lawn thrives.
- Sniffing honey-scented air - the wild clematis has begun to bloom in great cascades of white, the jonquils are still fragrant, and the apple blossom is tempting bees.
- Rejoicing in about 1000 green mulberries on our semi-dwarf black mulberry tree, just a little taller than me and laden with fruit every year, no matter what the weather. I will have purple fingers and a purple tongue, but we will need some kids to visit to make the most of the crop. Park a kid under a mulberry tree laden with ripe fruit and you will have an hour of peace as they guzzle - and a night of soaking their clothes in stain remover. Never pick mulberries in anything that won't stand a stain removing wash. Bare skin is best for picking mulberries, if you have a private spot to plant a mulberry tree ... and if you dare.
