When we first found our farm in St Remy de Provence there wasn't much to call a garden. There were some established trees, an orchard of abandoned fruit trees, a few gnarly old olives and a whole lot of broken down buildings. There was nothing of value and everything of value. Amongst these ruins were two magnificent pine trees that soared above everything else and between these two specimens was a grotto. The limestone grotto was shabby and poorly built with a broken terracotta statue of the Virgin Mary sitting on a pedestal in the middle.
My first instinct was to remove her as the statue offended my aesthetic sensibilities; she was in a poor state and the stone surrounds were in disrepair. In those days I longed for perfection in workmanship. I didn't understand how sentiment could change the way I think and how in time my emotions would filter what I see. In my mind, la Vierge Marie, didn't belong here and I had visions of contemporary sculpture in pride of place. Marie's removal wasn't a priority so she stayed put. It would be years before I could clear and landscape that part of the garden. Ten years on, Marie is still sitting there, unchanged and untouched. She is part of the garden and will stay that way. She will never look perfect but that doesn't matter, she belongs.
Why did I change my mind? How did I manage to leave something that is not necessarily pleasing to my eye alone? I came to realise that she meant a great deal to a secret visitor. Over the years as we renovated the property I would find floral tributes left by Marie's side - pretty posies, single blooms and sometimes even a vase filled with flowers. The visits and the tributes would coincide with religious festivals and holidays. I never saw who left the flowers and now that the renovations are over the visits have stopped. Living in France has made me sentimental, I just couldn't bring myself to move her...
Marie is part of my life and today it is me who is leaving the floral tributes and decorating her for holidays, xv.
image - me
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