secheresse
Friday, August 25, 2006
Something useful to do during the dry season...
Sécheresse
(sesh-ress)
noun, feminine
drought
If you were to sneak over to our backyard fence, part its curtain of faded jasmine, and look past a ditch full of wild fennel grown as tall as our older child, you'd spy our next-door voisin showering beneath the fiery heavens at daybreak, scrub-a-dub-dubbing right in the middle of his potager!
But you wouldn't see a steel nozzle above his head or an anti-skid mat beneath his feet. Only a sturdy kitchen stool separates him from the muddy ground below, with its neatly trellised vines—vines which are, oddly, bursting with fruit during this, The Year of the Drought....
There, amongst ripe red tomates, stands my eco-conscious neighbor, garden hose held high above his head. I see no shelves on which to set his shampoo (is that a vinegar rinse he is using?... they say old wine is good for both hair and plants!), and no modesty's-sake shower curtain protects him from this housewife-voyeur (hence those bright blue swim trunks). On closer look, there is a serene expression on the showerer's face, as water from the tuyau trickles over it, splashing and quenching the thirsty légumes beneath.
In this period of sécheresse, the municipal Powers That Be forbid us to water our gardens... but no one said you couldn't wash yourself! I watch as the shower water rains down over the would-be parched vegetables, and I am impressed with my neighbor's clever solution to irrigating his garden.
My cheeks turn as red as those well-watered tomatoes and I quickly release the jasmine, letting the floral curtain fall to a close.
French Vocabulary
le potager = vegetable garden
la tomate = tomato
le tuyau (d'arrosage) = garden hose
un légume = vegetable
la sécheresse = drought
***
L'amitié est une plante qui doit résister à la sécheresse.
Friendship is a plant that must resist drought. --Joseph Joubert
Listen to Jean-Marc's sentence:
C'est une année de sécheresse. It is year of drought. Download secheresse.wav
Terms & French Expressions:
la sécheresse cutanée/oculaire = dry skin/eyes
dire quelque chose avec sécheresse = to say something curtly
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