I visited an old friend in Burgundy: Pierre Poupon, a winegrower and writer who has captured the soul of this ancient and complex part of France in a score of books over the course of fifty years. At 90 he moved from his house in the Meursault vineyards to a flat in the suburbs of Beaune. When he went he wrote the following litany to the plants he was leaving behind in his old garden.
Let us always remember
The thujas with their fine scented leaves
The bushy red-leaved prunus
The syringa covered in white stars
The Japanese quince with blood red flowers
The mauve lilac above the gate
The forsythia, first to flower in the spring
The cherry tree grown huge, majestic, prodigious
The prunus that flowers early and gives us red plums
The three birches with pale trunks and dancing leaves
The cherry with sour fruit so good in pies
The rather scruffy apple tree with a worm in each fruit
The upright hornbeam straight as a cypress
The purple beech turned green by early frost
The cherry starved by the roots of the beech
The tender almond with its immaculate flowers
The old lime tree, our neighbour, that loses its leaves at the end of summer
Remember all these gifts that we pass on to others
They are the ill-assorted collection you will find round any ordinary French house, adding up to a nondescript garden. It is a moving litany, none the less. He knows them, he loves them for all their faults, and he misses them.
