Monday June 14th

Day 56

For a while this morning I forget to be grateful for how fortunate I am. We wake up late to a duvet cover of soft grey clouds and spitting rain. I want to stay in bed and read, he wants to explore in the car. We pour over the maps and guide books and find a place called La Bambouseraie, a park estate planted with giant bamboos from Asia, just two kilometres from here.

After a cafe lunch of huge platefuls of mozarella salad and just warm creme brulee - simple, fresh, French - I stop being grumpy and blaming. Especially when we find ourselves wandering down avenues of huge straight bamboos, through The Dragon Valley, and the Japanese garden full of purple acers and a monumental Gingko Biloba tree. Then I’m washed in all the green towering beauty of it.

Something I read on one of the information plaques, keeps playing in my mind like an insistent nightingale. It said there are three ways that bamboo blossom. One way is called Herd Blossoming because the same variety of bamboo - and there are hundreds of species - produce flowers at the same time all over the world. At random intervals and sometimes only every 120 years. As if they all share a time chip instinct.

My nightingale thought was what would it be like if the species of women and the species of men and the species of children all blossomed at the same time? And instead of living in fear the whole world broke out in love flowers because it is our true nature. And because like the bamboo we share the same instinct - where ever we live in the world.