While this furry canine may not seem to have a strong link to flowering prune trees, daffodils and irises, all heralds of spring, in fact, I photographed her (or him) next door to Graineterie Fiol, a seed and plant shop in Vieux Nice. It’s the time of year to plant seeds for summer growth. Yesterday I picked up some chives, Romanesco broccoli, Saxa radishes, violets, and coleus, a decorative plant, then planted them today. Radishes grow quickly, and this Saxa variety should be ready to eat in less than a month, after which I’ll plant some more regularly. The broccoli take longer to mature at 3-4 months, and I’ll be able to cultivate the chives for quite a while. The violets will decorate the fence border, and the coleus should be a nice addition to my potted plants. Both are plants that do well in the shade. Despite living on the French Riviera, I don’t get a lot of sun, since my apartment’s terrace is a northern exposure. This is a good thing here, however, since it makes a huge difference in summer temperatures at my place. The only downside is that I can’t grow any of the showy flowers that require full sun.

Another sign of spring’s arrival is the annual Carnaval, held around Mardi Gras each year in Nice. As a humorous link between my Oregon hometown and my current home in Nice, I snapped this shot of Brice de Nice holding a “Nice” brand surfboard. Nice’s Greek name was Nikaïa, from the Greek goddess of victory Nike — you can probably think of a related sports brand. It was founded in Eugene, Oregon.

Two weeks ago, I removed the glass shower door in my bathroom. The surrounding floor and walls were starting to rot, and I knew the door blocked much of the airflow needed to dry out the rest of the shower properly, so I decided to just take it out myself and put in a shower curtain and rod. While taking out the door, I discovered that the previous owners hadn’t waterproofed any of the seams… which is mainly why things had been rotting. However, it did make it much easier to remove the door, since all I had to do was unscrew it from one wall and pull it out of the other (it hadn’t been bolted in on both sides). As a reminder, they hadn’t waterproofed the floor beneath the tile shower they installed either. Every time I discover something like this, I’m glad I bargained down the price on my place — I had been very hard-nosed about it since some of the electrical work they’d done was borderline dangerous, which I suspected meant the rest of their “improvements” might be similar. Score one for intuition.

Putting in a curtain really improved the airflow, along with letting in a good deal more light… and a certain water-loving Maine Coon mutt! The video above shows Kanoko playing with the falling water this morning. I could keep him out by shutting the bathroom door, but his never-ending delight brings a lot of joy into my day, and so some old hand towels have now become Kanoko’s shower towels, and he’s happy as pie with the arrangement. When we finish showering, he saunters out alongside me, purrs while being towelled, then contentedly preens while I get ready for the day.

I mentioned some surprise seeds all sprouting in the last post — my pumpkin patch is growing well. All four are still healthy, those two are the largest. And they’re still just young’uns!

After an interminable winter of rain — and I say that as a native Oregonian who enjoys the rain! — the sun has finally begun to emerge from the clouds, and plants are finally growing. Ever since October we’ve had dark, windy, rainy, and even snowy weather the likes of which no one has seen in living memory. It was so dark that my daffodils and irises never bloomed; so much colder than usual that seeds that typically sprout in March have only begun to grow just now. And yet we’re still getting rain every day, with very rare exceptions. (Every. Single. Day.)

This winter I bought a few pumpkins to make pumpkin soup. With the last two, I realized that since they were organic, I could try planting their seeds. I figured that only some of them would sprout… well, all of them have! And I planted four! What am I going to do with four full-size pumpkin plants? For now I’ve repotted two of the seedlings in a planter; the other two are already in pots that should keep them happy for another month or so. Provençal pepper seeds I planted a month ago have just begun to sprout as well, and I’m looking forward to tasting them in autumn.

Renovation on my apartment is continuing too. I started pulling up linoleum in the entry last week, and have nearly finished. It will be nice to have an entry no longer in a state of flux.

While I was ill, the French national police knocked on my door. At first I wondered if I were in a movie, seeing the plain-clothed gentleman present himself with blue-white-red-striped official ID in hand and firm look on his face: “Bonjour madame, police nationale.” He was looking for one of my upstairs neighbors (the eldest son of his parents, who also live there, along with their two younger sons and the eldest son’s daughter), who has a warrant out for his arrest. Delightful. I swear my apartment is in a nice neighborhood overall. It would seem I’m just in a bad micro-part of it.

I finally recovered to the point where I was able to get back on my mountain bike yesterday at noon. Taking in the fresh autumn forest air on the rocky hills was wonderful, and raised my spirits. Then, this morning (on foot, not on my bike), a car driver decided that she would rather risk killing or handicapping me than lose ten seconds at a stop sign, which also had a clearly-marked pedestrian crossing. She accelerated — yes, accelerated, to my horror as I kept trying to signal “stop” with my hand and even shouted at her — then swerved to the side of the road to go around me, missing me by a few centimeters. I spent the rest of the day taking short breaks to pull back from my desk, wiggle my legs and look at them, happy they’re still attached and in good working order. Before that, however, I called the police. Again. It’s to the point where I recognize the dispatchers’ voices now. Good to know in this part of the world where there is no shortage of drivers who have a sense of entitlement the size of their hurtling metal narcissism machines: if a driver runs you down in a pedestrian crossing, you can write down/memorize their license plate, then go to the gendarmerie and file a complaint (porter plainte), also giving a description of the car as possible. The police will then contact them and handle it from there.

I could write a book on interactions with the police and gendarmes in France. I’ve now dealt with pickpockets, a drunken upstairs neighbor who would tip over his furniture at 2 in the morning while watching football, a mentally ill East German woman who’s hit her children, husband and niece, insults everyone in French and threatens to poison my cats, an upstairs neighbor who threatens his own mother (yes, I had called the police on him a couple of times — the national policeman’s visit didn’t entirely surprise me), and dangerously irresponsible drivers. Have a complaint? I probably know how to file it. In French!

Besides that, though, I found some beautiful chrysanthemums at a florist. They reminded me of Chinese and Japanese paintings. Earlier I had potted daffodil and iris bulbs I’d dug up and stored this summer, and am pleased that all of them are starting to sprout. From the two daffodils and three irises I had originally, I now have four daffodil and seven iris plants. Work on my apartment is also coming along, although very slowly.

This is my patio as it looked a few moments ago. In a month or two I’ll finally get my tax refund and have paid off the majority of the non-mortgage loans I had to take out in order to furnish my apartment last year. (My previous apartment was a furnished rental, so I had practically no furniture of my own and, especially, no appliances.) To pre-celebrate, yesterday I got myself something I’ve wanted for the longest time: a deck chair! It’s a solid oak frame, sold by Habitat and on sale once a year — which happens to be now. Once the tax refund has well and truly arrived, my next purchase will be a small oven, since I’m going mad without one. As I’ve mentioned before, I have a gluten (wheat, oats, etc.) and casein (all animal milks) intolerance, which means I can’t just order out for pizza, for example, and nor can I buy regular pies and cakes. Gluten- and casein-free baked goods are sold frozen and require an oven to cook them. Homemade pizza, freshly-baked lemon and apple pies… I can hardly wait.

Meanwhile I’m making do with delicious market finds. Today there were vegetables grown in Nice for sale, so I got some courgettes trompettes (flower zucchini) and an aubergine. I also got a type of melon I’ve always wanted to try, called le puits d’amour, “the love well”. Last week I tried a Charentais Carlencas melon, which was the most divinely delicious melon I have ever had the pleasure to savour.

I do have an update on my mentally ill, abusive neighbor: a few months ago she once again put crap (literal crap) on my patio and screamed at me, so I called the cops on her. Three VERY large gendarmes (national police, not local) took statements from another neighbor, myself, and the culprit. Two of the policemen had a private chat with her. When they returned they were visibly unnerved and said she was clearly off her rocker and among the most abusive people they’d had to deal with. The good news is, whatever they said to her had a strong effect: ever since, she hasn’t dared to speak to me, much less touch my patio (apart from some benign things like broken pens and paintbrushes). It has been wonderful to be able to use my patio. I do still keep a close eye on the kitties, of course. Her divorce should be final soon, and according to the police, she’ll have to move, since being unemployed (and unemployable in her mental state), she likely won’t be able to afford to buy out her husband’s half to her apartment. We’re all hoping that’s the case.

With all the space I have on my terrace, and empty pots after growing tomatoes last summer, I decided to try growing some plants that sprout in winter and bloom in early spring — daffodils and irises, namely. Irises are my favorite flower, especially the finer ones; the bulbs I planted are Iris reticulata ‘Harmony’. The daffodils are sprouting in the two front pots, with three iris plants peeking out in the black pot. Cyclamen plants are between and behind. It’s been a dark winter this year, since we’ve had storm after storm go through, and so my cyclamen haven’t yet bloomed. Hopefully the sun will come out enough to help them along.

For those who have been following the saga of my kitten-threatening, mentally ill neighbor, I have some good news, and an enlightening background on her. The good news is that she goes before the judge tomorrow, and one of her neighbors (the same lady who gave me Kanoko) goes before the judge on Wednesday. To make things easier to follow, I’ll use false names for the two women from now on: “Gertrude” is the mentally ill neighbor (she’s German), and “Francine” is the kind neighbor, who lives above Gertrude (she’s French). Francine came by last evening to pick up photos I’ve taken of various dirty tissue papers and animal excrement left by Gertrude, who’s threatened to kill Kanoko. I also gave Francine photos of my terrace that show just how closed-up it is, since it’s important to prove that indeed, my kitten cannot bother anyone except for me.

While chatting with Francine, I asked a few questions about Gertrude. It turns out that I was mistaken on an important point: I thought that Gertrude had attacked her niece without any witnesses. It turns out that she had actually attacked her in broad daylight, in public on the street, with several eyewitnesses, who testified to police. Naturally I asked why on earth Gertrude was still free, since she also physically abuses her children and husband, facts which are also known to the legal system. (Her husband is divorcing, the children are being followed by French social services, and they have their own psychiatrist. However, Gertrude has forbidden the psychiatrist from getting anywhere near her.) Francine told me that Gertrude had been warned that if there was ever any further complaint about her, swift punitive action would be taken.

This is why the French justice system has moved so quickly following the official complaint lodged by Francine’s (and Gertrude’s) building management in December. Everyone in their building (they’ve all had problems with Gertrude) was served notice to appear before a judge this month and in February. In part thanks to insight from a visitor to this blog who mentioned the possibility of psychiatric internment, Francine is going to insist on psychiatric monitoring for Gertrude rather than requesting any financial compensation. We know that financial compensation, while nice for the recipient, doesn’t get at the root of the problem when you’re dealing with an irrational person who holds to grudges like a pit bull in fury. It would in fact probably make things worse. We all want Gertrude to get treatment, for her own sake, for her children’s sake, for everyone’s sake.

I told Francine that indeed, I’d wondered what Gertrude must have gone through in her childhood to become someone so twisted, fearful and angry. “How did she and her husband meet, anyway?” Well, Francine explained, Francine and Gertrude’s husband, “Robert” (not his real name), had grown up together, so Francine knew him well. Robert had been an avid traveler in his youth. As soon as he got his license, he bought a motorcycle and with nothing but a backpack, rode to as many countries as he could, often for months at a time. Robert never had a girlfriend; he loved travelling too much. He went to Germany in 1989, when it was still divided between East and West. Gertrude and Robert met and married in East Germany — she didn’t speak a word of French. They came to France just before the wall fell in November of that year.

Gertrude learned French very quickly, said Francine. Robert bought them not one, but two apartments — the entire ground floor — wanting to give her a beautiful home. Gertrude wasn’t supposed to be able to have children, but made the most of France’s health care system and sought out the best doctors, getting pregnant soon after. It was then that Gertrude’s neighbors started hearing loud fights, and noticing her husband going out with bruises and scratches. Since they had children, he didn’t want to leave her. But she abused the children too, and lied about it to him and everyone else, until finally her lies became obvious a few years ago. It was only last year, however, that Robert finally left and demanded a divorce — she’s refusing it.

Francine promised to tell me how her visit to the judge goes on Wednesday. She’s dealt with Gertrude’s lies about her to others (Gertrude has done the same with me, as I learned from a few neighbors she spoke to) and Gertrude’s death threats for nearly twenty years now, managing to stay calm and never giving up, nor giving in to Gertrude’s violent tirades. I’m confident she’ll present her case well, and am happy to know that psychiatric treatment for Gertrude will be stressed.

My lemon tree has been overflowing with flowers lately, filling my terrace with a pleasantly tart and pungent odor. I had no idea how lemons grew until getting my tree a few months ago, so thought I’d share, photographing lemon development in three stages. All photos are from today. First, the flowers — older ones whose stamens will form lemons on the left, and a new blossom on the right. Open blossoms only stay this beautiful white for about a day or two:

Then the “baby” lemons about two weeks after flowering — you can tell they were stamens not too long ago:

And finally, lemons that have been growing for several months now:

Kanoko turns four and a half months old about now. Here he posed for the camera this morning, and I photographed him blissfully scratching a yucca stump a bit later. Originally I’d planned to pull out the big yucca, but Kanoko loves its stumps so much that I’ve kept it. It’s now regrowing leaves from the tops of the stumps.

Since Malo passed away only two months ago, I still remember how big he was, and can hardly believe that Kanoko has nearly reached Malo’s size at such a young age. Kanoko’s face has really filled out, his whiskers (chopped off by the people who abandoned him) are nice and long now, and his tail is beautiful. He certainly does look very “Maine Coon”. His paws still seem to be growing more quickly than the rest of him! (There’s a photoset of Kanoko that shows his development since my kind neighbor asked if I’d take care of him two months ago.)

There are also pictures of the bougainvillea and other plants on my terrace, including a baby rose plant that surprised me when I found it this morning. My cyclamen are looking to be beautiful again this year, and my lemon tree has been blooming up a storm lately: lots of lemons to come!

As for the crazy neighbor who threatened to kill Kanoko, all has been well since I went to the police, and put up the finer-grade wire on my terrace. I later gave the police report to people in her building, who spoke with their building management about it — it’s far from being the first report that’s been filed against her. Ever since, I’ve made a point of using my terrace normally and ignoring her whenever she came out. She’s stopped going outside very often and no longer bothers trying to scream at me (she never talked normally, only screamed — it’s not an exaggeration that we call her “crazy”, it truly seems that she is mentally ill, which is sad). So Kanoko is fine, I’m fine, and it’s wonderful to have such a quiet terrace.

This is truly a photo that speaks for itself.

These are pots of grass I planted for Kanoko — real wheat seeds I found in the seed for sprouts section of an organic grocery market here (Diététique Malausséna). This way I have a big bag of seeds that I can replant as often as needed. Kanoko loves his pots of grass: he’ll sit on them and enjoy himself.

Today I got Kanoko a harness, and am delighted — he understood it wasn’t a toy after just two “no”s when he tried playing with the lead, and then trotted around the apartment building hallway without a problem. As soon as he’s less wary of the hallway we’ll venture further. Malo abhorred the harness I tried on him as a kitten… even after several patient, gentle tries he would wail and fight it so energetically that I could never get the lead on. It’s great that Kanoko seems to accept a harness! I would love to walk him on weekends.

Today is about when Kanoko turns three months old. I took an hour to attempt photographing him outside — as those familiar with kittens know, they have two states: hyperactive and asleep. I somehow managed to get three good pictures of him though: the one shown here (which can be compared to a photo taken three weeks ago), a shot of him on his scratching post where you can see how his whiskers are growing out, and a photo where Kanoko shows off his muscles. He’s pretty good about climbing less often, and he does come down on his own when I say “descends !” (“get down!”), but… he’s a kitten.

It’s clearer now that he’s not a full-bred Maine Coon since he doesn’t have the tell-tale tufts of fur between his toes, plus he has an undershot chin. (Not that the standard matters to me personally — he’s a beautiful and adorable cat.) He certainly has a lot of Maine Coon in him anyway: his gradual-length coat, very full tail and tufted ears are really characteristic. It’s merely a question of curiosity, to have an idea of what to expect in terms of his future size and personality. Considering how his paws still seem to be growing faster than the rest of him, he’s probably going to be a big one!

I am still gardening too. My tillandsia (air plants) are doing well, with one of the ionantha rubra now growing a baby plant. No lemons have ripened yet — they do take a while, and the main crop will probably be in winter. I’ll start watering my cyclamen again soon, as it’s the time of year when they start to come out of their summer hibernation period. I’m looking forward to their beautiful colors.