I guess you saw that coming: we have to talk about lavender now.
Provence has been the landscape of impressionism, and that’s not only due to the fact that some important painters spent some productive time there, it’s also due to the wonderful colors of flowers and blossoms under a blue sky.
Lavender is not simply a flower though. It is grown for its fragrance. The high-time of lavender production is over, but it’s still an important product and a major symbol of this beautiful country.
What about you? What do you put in your closets and drawers, between your clothes? Do you like the fragrance or does it only remind you of your grandparents?
Actually I used to dislike lavender. I preferred cedarwood against the moths, and as a fragrance I always found lavender obtrusive and old-fashioned.
Not so any more. Cedarwood (or its oil) is hard to come by in normal supermarkets these days, while I know someone who produces small lavender pillows from self-grown plants. I’s an acquired taste, but I already had it when we went to France.
We intended to time our trip for lavender blossom, but as you saw in Sénanque, we came a little bit too early.
You can also see it in the Image of the Day. As the flowers grow, the rows seem to close. When we were there, there was plenty of space to walk in between. It’s nothing that you can’t work around when taking images from the right angle, but I suppose a month more would have made things even more impressive.