French Word-A-Day

quenotte

Quenottes and mots (Words book-signing) at Crawford Doyle Booksellers. Photo by Nancy Caswell, here with Fred.

quenotte (kuh-nowt) noun, feminine
  tooth, toothy-peg

The French word quenotte is used in "le langage enfantin" or kiddy talk. Kid-at-heart adults seem to use it too... Read on:

Sa figure était une pomme rouge, un bouton de pivoine prêt à fleurir, et là-dedans s'ouvraient, en haut, deux yeux noirs magnifiques, ombragés de grands cils épais qui mettaient une ombre dedans; en bas, une bouche charmante, étroite, humide pour le baiser, meublée de quenottes luisantes et microscopiques.

Her face was a red apple, a peony bud ready to bloom; and in it there opened, high up, two magnificent dark eyes, shaded by great thick lashes that cast a shadow on them; lower down, a charming mouth, small, moist for kissing, furnished with lustrous, little microscopic teeth.

From the book Best Short Stories (Dual-Language): Included are "La Parure," "Mademoiselle Fifi," "La Maison Tellier," "La Ficelle," "Miss Harriet," "Boule de Suif" and "Le Horla," all reflecting Maupassant's intimate familiarity with Paris and the universality of his creations.

Listen to Jean-Marc pronounce the French word "quenotte" and the text, above:

Download quenotte.mp3.Download quenotte.wav

After our daughter talked us into adopting "une plante carnivore,"* or flesh-eating flora, it was our son's turn to beg for a petrifying plant. For Max, that meant a quartet of cacti.

At the pépinière,* we settled on four pokey, piquant, prickly, and pin-topped plants. Next, I informed Max that it was my turn to shop (seeing the nursery had a homey section at the back of the store....).

While admiring the vintage clocks and embroidered blankets, I remembered that I was in the market for a gift not for myself, but for someone else. A little someone else, or soon-to-be someone else, that is.

I was surprised to see "newborn" items on display but, then again, we *were* in a "nursery"... of sorts. Noticing a small hand-painted box with the words "Boîte à Quenottes"* etched across the top, I thought I'd stumbled onto the most original present. A tooth box! But just when my enthusiasm had reached its peak, doubt set in.

As I examined the inside of the wooden box, marveling at all the "little caves" in which one could set fallen teeth for display, a thought struck me: What if the tooth-box idea was more than original... what if it was downright ODD? Next, a line of self-questioning began along with the realization that what I would be offering, in effect, was a box for lost body parts!

Perhaps, I questioned, a lost tooth is best left that way: LOST, and not laid down in a wooden box for viewing? What might the gift recipient think, on opening the box only to find a multi-cavitied cemetery for incisors?

Returning the baby tooth box to the shelf, I had to ask myself: What WERE you thinking? But before I could think too much further, I ran out of the store, a toothy grin following me (my son, delighted with his prickly purchase), to the comfort and "normalcy" of home: save a flesh-eating plant, and a kooky quartet of cacti.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~References~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
une plante (f) carnivore = carnivorous plant (in our home that'd be a "Venus Fly Trap"!); une pépinière (f) = nursery; une boîte (f) à quenottes = tooth box

Get your own Venus Fly Trap or "Carnivorous - Dionaea"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Shopping~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eau De Botot - The worlds first mouthwash invented in 1755 by Dr. Julien Botot for Louis XV of France. Recognized by the Royal Society of Medicine as a Superior Natural Product. Made in France. Directions: add a few drops to small glass of warm water. gargle and Rinse Mouth.

Hotel de Paris coir doormat

French posters: "Pate Dentrifice du Docteur Pierre" & "Eau de Botot"
Words in a French Life: Lessons in Love and Language from the South of France

Read books, newspapers (Le Monde), magazines, blogs and more - on a Kindle!

vivace

Not sure which flowers are vivace and which aren't, but the little boy is awfully cute.

 

vivace (vee-vas) adjective
  1. long-lived, undying, inveterate, vivid
  2. hearty, robust

le pois vivace = everlasting pea
la plante vivace = perennial
  les souvenirs vivaces = vivid memories

:: Quote / Audio File ::

L'absence n'est-elle pas, pour qui aime, la plus certaine, la plus efficace, la plus vivace, la plus indestructible, la plus fidèle des présences ? For to one who loves, is not absence the most effective, the most tenacious, the most indestructible, the most faithful of presences? --Marcel Proust

Listen to my daughter's marraine (godmother), Rachel, pronounce today's word and quote: Download vivace.mp3 . Download vivace.wav

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Today we're going to talk about flowers and asparagus and even asparagus flowers if we so fancy and, by the way, does asparagus flower?  I wouldn't know, being a "newbie gardener". At least I've quit saying, "I don't have a green thumb", for as Mom always said: what you say is what you get! And while I don't want my thumb to turn literally green, I do want what the French figuratively call "la main verte".*

I've a hunch that Aunt Marie-Françoise has "la main verte" even though I've never seen chickpeas or chard or even a scarecrow chez elle.* To be fair, none of those exists in my own garden either, though I did plant onions, radishes, and betteraves* last week! During my first guided tour of the newly plowed grounds, Jean-Marc's aunt offered nods of encouragement.

I showed off the flower beds as well: sunflowers, morning glories, shasta daisies, and those pink-faced "farewell-to-springs," or godetia. As I pointed to the dusty, barren plots (not a sprouting plant in sight) my mind's eye saw towering tournesols,* aromatic herbs a go-go, radishes galore, and more!  I wondered, did Marie-Françoise see the same?

Look! she said, turning from the muddy garden patch. I followed her over to the grassy outskirts of the potager* only to examine an ugly, stubbled weed. "This one is no longer good," she mumbled. "Ah, here's one!" I watched Marie-Françoise pinch off the tips of the "asperge sauvage",* motioning for me to do the same.
"Not much... but enough for an omelet!" she explained, handing me the spear-shaped tips.

Making our way along the banks of the stream, our asparagus stash growing, we stopped to study the wild flowers: indigo blue muscari* (Marie Françoise tells me she used to dye her doll's clothes with the boiled flowers), mustard yellow "genêt"* (also good for dye and used in edible flower salads), and "fumeterre".* I learned that Uncle Jean-Claude collected fumitory as a kid, selling it for centimes to the pharmacist, who, in turn, made up potions that cured everything from conjunctivitis to evil spirits. And although pharmacists like fumeterre, so do the local turtle doves--which the flowers cure not of love but of hunger.

By the time we returned home from our walk, we definitely had "la main verte." And our hands were literally green with edible weeds. There were curitive flowers, too, and even dye (for our hair?) albeit blue. Why, that ought to scare the crows out of my new garden (once I get the American corn planted...) and send the snails and slugs "running" from the green-thumbed giant with blue locks trailing down her back.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~References~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
la main (f) verte = the green hand (French term; the English equivalent is "green thumb"); chez elle = at her place; la betterave (f) = beet; le tournesol (m) = sunflower; le muscari (m) = grape hyacinth; la fumeterre (f) = "fumée de la terre" or "smoke of the earth" (fumitory flower); une asperge (f) sauvage = wild asparagus; le genêt (m) = broom flower
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Selected mail in response to today's post:
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Hello Kristin:

Your piece on your garden adventures makes me have to come clean about my unstoppable pangs of jealousy of the gardens of France when I am there each summer. (We are the couple you met in Portland who are "commissaires" at the LeMans 24 hour race each year) Not only is central France several climate zones ahead of us in Oregon, but the plots have been tended for 600 years in many cases. I so desperately want my place to look that nice that I go into a frenzy of garden augmentation each year upon my return. I feel empathy for you starting from scratch in your new home, but as the attached picture will attest it is possible to make progress. I feel good about my progress and will continue to feel good until my rental car exits the denseness of Paris and finds the verdant countryside of your adopted land. The first "Ville Fleurie" sign will make my heart both sing and ache at the same time. Here, a few petunias scratched into the curb by a Chevron station passes for municipal beautification. In France everything drips and drools with flowers and the climbing roses are up to the chimney tops. Your new home will soon look that way. Keep digging.
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Frank Levin / Barbara Blizzard

(Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Q. Levin)


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betterave

A "leeky" vegetable potager in the Queyras Valley of the French Hautes-Alpes

Featured Product:  Eiffel Tower Confetti! (As if a Francophile needed any more joie de vivre...)

~~~~~~~~~BETTERAVE~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
la betterave (beht-rav) noun, feminine
   : beet

[from the words "bette" (beet) and "rave" (turnip, radish)]

  => la betterave sucrière = sugar beet
  => la betterave rouge = beetroot
  => la betteravier (ière) =beet grower
  => la betterave fourragère = mangel-wurzel, fodder beet
  => la betterave potagère = edible beet (a.k.a. "red carrot" or "red root"). An example of a "bettrave potagère" is the "crapaudine". Sure you want to eat one now? (le crapaud = toad)

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:: Audio File & Quote ::

On est gouvernés par des lascars qui fixent le prix de la betterave et qui ne sauraient pas faire pousser des radis. We are governed by rogues who fix the price of beets and who wouldn't know how to grow a radish. -Michel Audiard (French Film director, 1920-1985)

Listen to Jean-Marc pronounce today's word and quote:
Download betterave.mp3 . Download betterave.wav

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(Note: as promised, we return now to the calm, slice-of-life stories from this wind-blown wine farm. Meantime, I'm working on Chapter One of the "other" story (so as not to say "anti-story"): a behind-the-scenes script of this fluffy French existence: who knows if, or when, such a book will ever see the light of day or whether some stories aren't best left to bask in the cool shade of an incognito garden. Back now to the regular postings from Provence... and to today's sketch):

           GOLD, or Green, in One's Own Back Yard...

Returning home via a rosemary- and olivier*-flanked driveway, I noticed the Citroënette* parked across from our wine cellar, just next to a few piles of woody sarments* destined to become compost. (Cuttings, I might add, that I am forever backing into by car, only to track a "chorus" of the branches out of our driveway each day, arriving to my destination, pre-announced, and no thanks to the honky-tonk racket of vagabond vines voicing their complaints from behind me. Must be hell to be dragged into town by the tips of your woody toes).

Aunt Marie-Françoise, the driver of the Citroënette, was seated at the kitchen table, sharing hibiscus tea with Jean-Marc. "What have you got in that sack?" they wanted to know. I tried hiding a few of the seed packets (after the sunflower seed incident a few posts back), as a housewife might hide a few of
the sundresses she's just bought after one too many lunchtime martinis), but with four eyes fixed on the shopping bag, I was unable to shove the merchandise into a closet, behind any camouflaging coats.

One by one, I pulled the seed packets from the plastic sack. There were future crunchy radishes, melt-in-your-mouth betteraves,* cocktail onions, "Reminiscent of My American Roots" Corn, Charentais* Frenchy melon, sweet peas or "pois de senteur," Not-So-Loopy Lupine, Trailer Park Petunias, and the sunny marigolds that my mom once planted alongside them.

I studied my family's faces as they set down their cups of hibiscus and I could just swear they were thinking that French pigs would surely fly before the desert rat standing before them would succeed at poh-tow-zhay* gardening. Now that's paranoia for you.

(In the next installment, or maybe the one after that, Marie-Françoise shows me the edible plants and flowers that are already growing in my garden. Stay tuned.)
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~References~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
un olivier (m) = olive tree; la citroënette (f) = made up word for "really small Citroën); le sarment (m) = twining (vine shoot); la betterave (f) = beet; Charentais = "a type of true cantaloupe from Europe (what Americans call cantaloupes are actually muskmelons.); poh-tow-zhay = pronunciation for "potager" or (kitchen garden)

Read The Edible French Garden (only 19 copies left, minus the one I just bought...) and Kitchen Gardens of France

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Shopping~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Vedrantais Charentais Melon (the real cantaloupe) 10 Seeds - Heirloom. Charentais-type melons are the real cantaloupes, born in Italy and refined in France. The skin is uniquely colored, and ripe melons don't slip from the vine. The fruit inside is rich orange, sweet and deliciously fragrant.

French Market Garden: Seeds from ten different plants, thoughtfully selected to adorn your dinner plate with Provencal gourmet vegetables.  

Exercises in French Phonics

Painless French: grammar, pronunciation, idioms, idiocies (culture) and more!

Provence Waffleweave Dishcloth Set