Sunday capers

Concreting and levelling a floor while confit d'agneau (slow cooked lamb with onions and preserved lemons) cooked itself in the oven, and a short promenade in the sunshine when I saw this caper bush in flower. There are a couple of buds too - the capers we eat - one in the left hand corner of this shot and one near the flower. My own two plants that I raised from seed sent to me by a blogger in California are growing slowly, still in pots after a couple of years, and haven't flowered yet. (Molly once sent me some Tuscan caper seeds, but sadly they didn't take.)

I'm aware that the day isn't so calm for others - in Istanbul the police have attacked people remembering those who were killed in earlier protests and in Brazil hundreds of thousands of people are protesting against corruption and development which prioritises the World Cup over the needs of ordinary people. The Turkish prime minister has linked the two, as I have done, but for different reasons. I think it's all part of a worldwide movement that I hope will grow against international financial arrangements and suppression of ordinary people and their lives.

On a lighter note, we had another wonderful evening in Neffiès last night, with a meal by Las Mascas (sorcerers) de Neffiès, entirely made with local ingredients and served by las mascas themselves in between their performances of Occitan songs. We ate: tortilla with nettle leaves, tapanade,* chickpea and tomato salad; mutton sausage with local vegetables and aioli made with wild garlic; local goats cheese with rosemary syrup; chocolate cake decorated with a mallow flower and containing some herbs we couldn't identify. We sat with friends at the (peaceful) anarchist occitanist end of our table and had a great time as the full moon rose over the plane trees and the decorations - lights and fabrics - put up by las mascas.

* the word tapenade comes from the Occitan word for caper - tapera.