Monsieur Aubert’s mistress

He handles the carrots gently, smoothing their long green fronds with his soft fingers. He brushes away little specks of dust and dirt, rubs the skin a little to remove some grit. To him they are sweet, golden treasures. Little miracles of seed and soil. He tenderly holds them up to the early evening sky, smiling with delight - a magical glow against deep, heady blue.

Monsieur Aubert places them in the old wicker basket and wanders back to the house along the rows of beans and onions.

His wife is his wife, he says, and his garden, a most productive mistress. He spends his late-spring afternoons and early evenings with ‘her’, tending her dark, fertile soil. Sultry hours, ‘their’ hours, in which the only witnesses are the lizards who bask then scatter among the stones when he comes near.

Last December his mistress was submerged by flood water, in February she lay beneath a thick blanket of snow.

Monsieur Aubert put his faith in Mother Nature and his own hard work. He cherished his love back to life, as excited as a new father when she delivered her first late-winter crops.

Tomorrow, Monsieur Aubert will put a fold-up table into the back of his white Peugeot and drive to the weekly market.

While his wife makes the rounds, selects cheese and bread, buys a new milk pan, he will set up the little table next to the chestnut trees. The table top is no bigger than a tea tray, but he will find space for a little box of new potatoes, a clutch of onions, some lettuces, maybe a basket of walnuts.

And perhaps his mistress will allow him to take two or three bunches of carrots.