68.

May 20th.

I`m helping on the allotments nearbye, looking after an English couple’s plot while they are away. Chickens need tending and plants watering. Suzanne, carrying a triangular wedge of bright orange hair and depression and helplessness possible tangled up in it, asks for aid each time she spots me there.I think she has clocked me these last few days! Her man is in hospital recovering from chemotherapy and she can`t cope. She is afraid of hens and hers live in filth and are fed wheat only, when she remembers. They are not laying well, few eggs, she moans. . Every one who has a strip there throws them grass, clover and pis–en-lit. I tell Mr. Sarbontier that dandelions are called piss-a-bed, amongst other names, in England too. He is delighted with that and shuffles away from the tubs of water he is filling from the stream to tell Marguerite, his wife. They are both 84. He was ‘Artisan’ all his life, plastering, building and carpentry. Nowadays he creaks and groans but laughs a lot. You have to be out he says, the garden keeps us going, winter or spring, keep watering and everything will grow. I know but don`t you think we have had enough rain lately, I ask. Look at the dust rising from that tractor, he points. The surface is dry, dry, dry. I think people fuss to much about watering; it brings up the roots unless it is a soaking you are giving, but I don`t say any of that to him; just nod and blow out a corresponding sigh, as he does