Le Lavandin

My next stop was Le Lavandin, a luxury bed and breakfast near the old provençale town of Pernes-les-Fontaines owned by the inspirational Georgia Perrin, a long-time friend of my sister. I was here for a week to help her run her place and to enjoy her very gorgeous house and large garden complete with swimming-pool, labyrinth, huge vegetable and flower garden, lavender field, pétanque court and various other delights. Amazingly nearly 80 years old, Georgia from Utah in the USA has been running this guest house for nearly 15 years with the help of the wonderful Rachida and her husband Ali, as well as a team of fabulous gardeners who come in once a week to keep the place looking beautiful.

This is a big undertaking. There are four double guest rooms as well as a studio apartment that sleeps 2 -3 more. All are ensuite and have outdoor terraces or balconies with views onto the garden or over to distant hills. The sunset views are magnifique - every night a huge red ball dips slowly behind the distant hills and everywhere glows orange. There is also a summer kitchen for guests' use with fridge, sink and barbecue, and plenty of peaceful spots for outdoor dining. Guests are greeted individually on arrival, shown to their rooms and offered a bottle of wine, and the week I was there the place was full with most guests staying for nearly a week.

My days here started not long after 7 and my first job was to head downstairs from my room up in the roof and open the shutters outside Georgia's sitting-room. I love French shutters. Often old with peeling paint in shades of faded blue, grey or green, they keep the heat in in winter (I can't imagine it!) and the sun out in summer. What is second nature to most French is a novelty for us Kiwis and the knack of opening and closing the ancient things quietly takes a while to acquire.

Next, I had to go into the garden to cut the flowers. What a pleasure this task was. The air was always fresh and almost cool, even though every day would be well over 30 degrees, and the sun had yet to heat up. I cut apricot-coloured roses, white and purple hydrangeas, yellow daisies or purple-blue delphiniums to the sound of birds singing and sheep bells clinking gently in the distance. I even got used to the art of arranging the flowers nicely in vases for the breakfast tables, always trying to match their colours with the crockery, place mats and serviettes that Georgia had carefully chosen the night before.


When we had a full house (10 adults and 2 children) there were two breakfast tables to prepare. Everything had to be perfect: the position of the plates and cups, the teaspoons on the saucers just so, water glasses, juice glasses, jams, honeys, sugar cubes, silver jugs of cream or milk. After setting the tables, I had to make the coffee, yes, me! Hehe, good job Georgia is a good teacher, it wasn't hard. Grind the coffee fresh every morning, count the number of spoonsful into each coffee pot (usually 3 pots), at 8.50am pour on hot water, stir and leave, at 8.55am pour into two thermos jugs through a strainer, wipe down the jugs and take out to the tables along with a thermos of hot water for the tea. And then there were the guests who didn't drink tea or coffee but instead had Coke in a glass full of ice, yes, for breakfast!

As well, I had to squeeze the oranges for juice, pour and serve, fill the water glasses with water and leave a jug, sorry, a pitcher of iced water on the table, paint the slices of bread with butter and bake them in the oven, take out the fruit to be prepared by Rachida (maybe melon with fresh mint, or strawberries and cream, sliced peaches or nectarines, pears coated in lemon juice and served with Bleu de Bresse (a delicious creamy blue cheese) and a sprinkling of red peppercorns, or rhubarb compote with yogurt. On alternate mornings there was granola (home-made by me and super-tasty with the addition of grated orange rind) or something cooked by Georgia - French toast (here called, strangely, pain perdu - lost bread), or leek and red pepper frittata with pepper pecorino and lots of thyme from the garden, or boiled eggs and strips of crispy bacon (cooked to perfection by Rachida not me!), or grilled fresh chèvre (goat's cheese) on crostini with thyme.

Of course, there was always fresh bread (pain sportif - hazelnut and orange rind; pain aux olives; pain complet - whole grain; or just plain baguette), and pastries. These might be sacristans ( a kind of flaky almond sticky mix), pains aux raisins (custardy raisin sticky buns), chaussons aux pommes (pastries stuffed  with apple), or maybe beignets au chocolat (little donuts covered in sugar and filled with chocolate), my favourite! Once breakfast was over at 10am and we had cleared the tables and filled the dishwashers we got to eat the leftovers, well I did. Rachida and Ali are Muslims and it was Ramadan while I was there so they were not allowed to eat or drink anything from sunrise till sunset. What torture! It's daylight here at the moment from about 5am till 10pm so they didn't have much of a window. A long afternoon siesta is the only way to get through these hot days without even liquid and one day Rachida nearly passed out at home. So I alone was stuffing my face every morning. Probably a good job I stayed no longer than a week!