On 12th June, I attended the Prix Fitzgerald award ceremony at the Hôtel Belles Rives in Juan-les-Pins. The hotel looks out over the Mediterranean and has views all along this famous stretch of French Riviera. I live inland of this smart address on a rundown olive farm and although I am no longer one for…
My goodness, we are June already. I am not sure where the time goes but we have been enjoying the splendours of early summer with its wonderful balmy evenings, drinks outside and plenty of reading in the garden after a hard day at the desk. I have two events coming up in the next month…
It is six in the morning, the birds outside my window are chattering away. Aside from their song, all is still and quiet – I am the only one awake. A few kilometres down the hill, the Cannes Film Festival is in full swing. Alas, due to my own work commitments, I have not paid…
April is a special month for me; it contains our wedding anniversary and my birthday. This year, the spring weather has been exceptional and I have been able to spend a great deal of time outside studying and photographing the various pollinators tirelessly working the blossoms, preparing the fruit of upcoming months for us, which…
I received this email this morning and we are posting it in its entirety due to its importance. PLEASE help, donate, spread the word, change your gardening habits, please let us do whatever it takes to turn this crisis around Thank you Carol Dear friends, Right now, billions of bees are dying. Already, there are…
I cannot believe the month of March is almost over. It has been a splendid month and I have been out in the garden almost on a daily basis taking photographs of the changing faces of Nature. If you go to my Pinterest page http://pinterest.com/CarolDrinkwater/ you can enjoy some of the flowers and views that…
Spring is stepping out, putting on her finery, dressing the land in colour while the honeybees are about gorging on the almond and rosemary blossoms; the olive trees are pruned, the burning of the excess foliage has been completed and now sawing of what should be sufficient wood for the rest of this century is…
As an organic farmer and someone who fights for the protection of our bees, I request you please to sign this and to pass it on. If you don’t speak French: it is the plea of a young viticulture, Emmanuel Giboulot, who is being prosecuted for refusing to treat his vines with an insecticide that…
I am spending my days in the trees. Days in the silvery trees. We have been olive pruning. We are olive pruning when the weather permits us to go outside and work. February is traditionally the rainy season here but this year it really has been persistent. I am not complaining because it is feeding…
After a very successful and great-time-had-by-all three days, the France Show has been packed away for this year. So many visitors came and none seemed exhausted because, unlike last year, they did not have to fight their way through snow blizzards and storms to reach Earls Court. Altogether, the mood was buoyant and optimistic. Friends…
The Mad Old Chateau, our residence and place of work outside Paris, is humming with activity. Both Michel and I are preparing our first trips of the year. I am leaving on Wednesday morning for London for three days at the France Show in Earls Court (see Events) followed by a week in Ireland while…
Yesterday, I took a day off. This is quite a rare event for me, but after the olive harvesting and a house crowded with lovely friends who have been olive-picking with us, I decided it was time for a little relaxation. We collected close to 400 kilos of olives, which for a year with not…
A robin has flown into the house through a set of open French doors and is sitting in the corner by one of the antique lamps I picked up from a château sale near St Tropez. Michel is in the kitchen chopping up a mushroom he collected from the hillside this morning after yesterday’s rain….
Hola, I am writing this from the Hotel Romantico in Sitges, northern Spain, twenty minutes south of Barcelona by train. Sitges in early October is a regular stop for Michel, my husband, and I. We drive here from our farm in the hills behind Cannes to participate in a Mediterranean documentary film festival and market,…
Hooray! I have my first Kindle Single hitting the Amazon Kindle e-bookshop today. It is a love story set along the shores of the Mediterranean and is titled The Girl in Room Fourteen Here are British and US links to it. US http://tinyurl.com/kywqknu UK http://www.amazon.co.uk If you buy it, and I hope that you will,…
I am very concerned to have learnt that Bayer is suing the European Commission to overturn its two-year ban on the use of Neonicotinoid pesticides. These pesticides are a major factor in the dying off of millions of bees around the world. A huge public push won this landmark ban only months ago. Please, let…
La Rentrée in France has several meanings. The Return. It is the time when everyone is heading home, heading north, after their holidays. It is back to school, back to the office. The beginning of autumn, the end of summer. All the big supermarkets are packed with satchels for sale, special deals on exercise books…
Paris in August is a very different and delightful experience. Basically because the city is full of foreigners and many Parisians have fled south to enjoy the sun and their summer holidays so there is an atmosphere of calm. The frantic hooting of traffic and fraught pace of life seems to have been snuffed out….
As July draws to a close and the holiday season is really underway here in the South of France, I thought I would just send a little note to remind you that if you are looking for holiday reads, the entire six-book Olive series is out now as a compilation pack for those of you…