Ask Carpetblogger: Why Don't you Go Back to Nice?

Isn't it getting cold?

I have a different post ready to go but it’s so boring compared to what went down in the Holler on this sunny fall Sunday. Nothing like this ever happens in France’s 5th largest city. Why would I go back?

I mentioned Secret Grapes in a Notes post last week. These are grapes gone wild, usually in the verges between fields or in trees, long forgotten by whoever planted them. Only observant walkers see them, and only in the fall when the grapes are ripe. I’ve been walking a lot so I know where to find them. They’re a wonderful snack to find on a walk, but they’re finishing up for the year.

Secret Grapes in a tree

I found secret grapes on my own property, vining recklessly and unproductively in a field verge. Everyone needs to pull their weight around here but you can’t if you don’t have the support you need. So today I built them a trellis. They’re dying now but I know we’ll all appreciate more structured growth next year.

I made it sturdy, using wire tensioners so the wires stay extra tight. Very professional, thanks for noticing.

I woke up this morning to see the fields under my bedroom window churned up by foraging boar. I’ve never seen them but their presence is becoming obvious; they’re coming closer to the hamlet, sowing destruction.

While I was working on my trellis, there was a vigorous boar hunt going in the wooded hills facing my land. Hounds were baying, guys in trucks were scurrying around. I couldn’t see anything but recognized this activity because, while I have never built a grape trellis before, I have shot a boar¹.

Pic because it did happen

“I hope that fleeing boar doesn’t run down the hill, cross the road and head toward the much bigger woods behind my land with all the hounds and hunters running after it,” I said to myself, probably out loud.

A minute later, that is precisely what happened. The boar comes barreling down the (pictured below) field, hounds in pursuit. A hunter shoots it, it goes down kicking, but isn’t dead. Boom! The hunter shoots it again. Dead. Right in front of my very eyes!

I am not strictly anti-hunting but I don’t love it. I eat meat, including cinghiale, so I can’t get prissy about being confronted with the process under which it gets to me. I would have preferred, however, if the hunter had got that boar on the first shot. I also would have preferred if the activity had not concluded between two houses and about 400 meters from where I was building a grape trellis in my own giardino. Presumedly the neighbor in the house adjoining the field had similar thoughts, since he yelled something at the pack of hunters and dogs milling around the boar corpse.

The hunters are local. I recognized some of them but don’t know them. There’s a small hunting cabin in the woods behind my land to which they retreated to process the dead boar. I doubt I’ll get a steak delivered, but you never know.

1. Because the person I was with reads this publication, I should clarify that perhaps I didn’t pull the trigger but he cannot deny I contributed materially to the effort.