Ceret - back to a cold, wet market day.

We were all back to hats, gloves and winter coats today. It rained most of the night but not today but the temperature is in the single digits. About the same temperature as at home. The market stalls again had woolly hats and scarves for sale, last chance to get rid of their winter inventory.

Made me think of Rasta. An e-mail from Simon said he was getting a little too comfortable there.

We are not this daring: olives in chilli peppers.

Not getting this either. In mustard. We have had green olives with basil and with
 garlic and with lemon. We tend to get just plain Greek black olives.

Tempted but, no. Huge slabs of nougat that he cuts into the amount you
want with a big cleaver.

I don't know how to recognize an almond tree but these are locally grown and many of the
market stalls sell cakes, tarts, cookies and candies with local grown almonds.

I looked up black radishes but they didn't appeal to me. Stronger than red ones and
they have to be peeled. Most recipes talked about grating or shredding them in salads
or coleslaw. No thanks.

Every produce stall has artichokes. Some are red. Some have their leaves left on.

Some more research revealed that they are a Mediterranean crop. Southern France is one of the top 10 producers, along with Spain. We have seen fields of them being grown in the valley. I went looking for some on my walk this afternoon.

That's an artichoke, in a backyard garden, with its thorny, fern like leaves.

Most gardens have been dug over  now and some have obviously had some early seeds
put in. That's a couple of rows of artichokes in the middle and I think its peas just behind.

Any recipe I've looked at sounds like a lot of bother for little reward so I'll just stick to my pickled artichoke hearts from Costco.

The intermittent sunlight gave some colourful dappling to the hills.

There was a whole row of trees in blossom in the orchard opposite
the convent. But the rest of the trees were still not "showing" yet.

The orchard owner had kindly labelled the trees in this row and they're apricots.
I'm assuming the rest are cherries.

On the other side of the road are a couple of terraces with young trees planted and an irrigation system.
Although it doesn't yet have a fence it already has a serious metal gate. I think this translates
to Truffle Farm Protected by Law Access Forbidden, or something like that. Curious.