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Every Tuesday I take lambs to a slaughterhouse upstate; I'm on the highway about 4 hours RT.  I listen to books being read to me while I drive.  This Tuesday I listened to Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert read by Claire Bloom.   In How Fiction Works (what I listened to last Tuesday) The New Yorker critic James Wood describes how well Flaubert uses Free Indirect Discourse: third person narration that issues from the character as first person narration which can be as subtle as diction, even the choice of one word over another.

I wanted to see how Flaubert narrated his story—but try as I have in the past to read Madame Bovary, in either French or English, I  can't.  I always put the book down after several chapters in  utter boredom.  Finally, I think I've come upon the reason why for me the novel is unreadable. 

Flaubert in a letter to his lover Louise Colet mentions that he doesn't like Charles or Emma Bovary—could this be why—do I require that authors like their creations?  Curious.  I feel, for example, that Jane Austen likes her sweet  Emma and that Patricia Highsmith likes her most evil Mr. Ripley; sweet or evil—no matter which—I like reading about the adventures of these characters.

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Here, Flaubert humorously, but meanly, goes between the formal speech of the president of the jury announcing the winning farmers and the sweet nothings of Rodolphe, written in Free Indirect Discourse, that seduce Madame Bovary at the local agricultural show almost under the nose of Charles her doltish and soon to be cuckolded husband.

'And he seized her hand; she did not withdraw it.

"For good farming generally!" cried the president.

—Just now, for example, when I went to your house.

"To Monsieur Bizat of Quincampoix."

—Did I know I should accompany you?

"Seventy francs."

—A hundred times I wished to go; and I followed you—I remained.

"Manures!"

—And I shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days, all my   life!

"To Monsieur Caron of Argueil, a gold medal!"

—For I have never in the society of any other person found so complete a charm.

"To Monsieur Bain of Givry-Saint-Martin."

—And I shall carry away with me the remembrance of you.

"For a merino ram!"

—But you will forget me; I shall pass away like a shadow.'

...

Translated by Eleanor Marx-Aveling, Karl Marx's daughter, who like Emma Bovary committed suicide using poison.  The italics above are mine.

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By the way, I did finish listening to most of the novel but it was an abridged edition from Audible.com.  There are treasures in his writing.  Flaubert wrote slowly making sure his language was precise and that he used the mot juste.

"During the lovely summer evenings, at the hour when the warm streets are empty and the maids play shuttlecock on the doorsteps, he would open his window and look out, leaning on his elbow."

Translated by Mildred Marmur.

A nickel will get you on the subway, but garlic will get you a seat.

After a hot day lolling in the shade of a tree the hungry sheep begin to graze when the sun goes down.

I think of Ramadan when Marrakech came alive at night after a day of fasting.  The fireflies are kif pipes lit in the dark  and narrow ways that puzzle through the souk as the sundown horns shriek from the mosques to send the faithful and hungry rushing home for harira,* a thick, peppery lamb soup to break their fast.

Salman Rushdie captures the vibrant Arab night well in The Satanic Verses.

*Harira: lamb shoulder browned in olive oil with salt, garlic & onion added to lentils & water with Harisa, saffon, cinnamon & coriander on low heat until it thickens.  One of many ways to make it; no matter the recipe, it's always better the next day.

I wanted to take myself out on the bike Sunday morning but get back in time to  watch Versus, the cycling channel, and the finish of Stage 14 (115 miles) of the Tour de France, the first day in the Pyrenees.   About 10 AM the leaders had 25 miles to ride before the finish in Ax 3 Domaines with a 3000 foot climb before them; while my ride, 17.5 miles, was on the relative flats around Goshen.  It would take us about an hour to finish our rides: me here, riding slower but shorter and flatter; the peloton there, riding faster but longer and climbing.  However, if I rode quickly I hoped to get back before the riders started streaming across the finish line as the final ascent would slow them.

I was riding well, but not as fast as I'd hoped; I might miss seeing the  stage winner.  I could feel strain in my glutes as I pedaled.

With about 4 miles to go, I was passed on a slight downhill—so I did what I do, strain or not—I sped up and stayed with the passing rider, wondering if he would maintain his speed on the slight grade coming up as I watched his head bob—a sign of stress—he was probably riding faster than he normally does, but so was I. 

Here came the grade: he slowed a little—my heart was pounding but I had to go—"Passing," I said when I accelerated around him to take the lead.  I had to maintain what I thought to be an unpassable pace until the end no matter what my heart rate was or was to become. And I did.

At the last mile marker—my finsh line—I recorded the time on my Garmin cycle computer and backed off the pedals; I rode slower to cool down over the 1/4 mile ride to my door; as I turned off the trail, I heard from behind me, "Hey thanks, man."  I yelled back, "Yeah, yeah..."

At home I saw that I'd recorded another season best: 16 miles in 53 minutes and 53 seconds; well over a minute faster than the previous best time recorded last Sunday and only 13  seconds slower than my all-time best recorded in 2008.  I should have thanked him.

Sweat dripping from my nose, with the AC roaring, I sat down before the TV to watch the last 2 miles of the Tour drinking from a gallon of Poland Spring. 

"...Christophe Riblon of France attacked early to out-run Mark Cavendish and the other sprinters winning the stage, finishing in 4 hours, 52 minutes, 43 seconds; ahead of Denis Menchov of Russia and Samuel Sanchez of Spain. Andy Schleck of Luxembourg was 4th but retained the yellow jersey with a 31 second  lead on main rival, and last year's Tour victor, Alberto Contador of Spain." 

These professional riders are fast (they can ride more than twice as fast as I can on a level road)—all legs and lungs—almost "superhuman" with an incredible tolerance of pain.  Now that Lance is out of contention, behind by 39 minutes due to crashes and bike breakdowns, I'm pulling for Andy.

Sheep make the soil fertile for the garlic we grow and now that we've harvested it, I let the lambs into the beds to graze the weeds—appropriately enough called Lamb's Quarters*—that also grow well in the rich soil. 

We stopped hoeing about two weeks before harvest when the garlic was large enough to not be disadvantaged in the competition for soil nutrients, sunlight and water with the robust Lamb's Quarters growing alongside it.

*Lamb's Quarters grow abundantly upstate; like many leafy greens they are nutritious for humans as well as for sheep.  Lamb's Quarters are excellent steamed and taste mildly like asparagus. 

German White and Musik

German White and Musik are subvarieties of Porcelain, a variety of hard-neck garlic that has a thick bulb wrapper that tends to be parchment-like and tightly cover its few, but large, cloves. The outer bulb wrappers are often very white but some show a purple striping as you peel away the wrappers.  Cloves are easy to peel.

Many subvarieties of Porcelain garlic are strong tasting and can store for ten months or more at cool room temperatures. 

Marino, aka Merino

Marino is a subvariety of Rocambole, a variety of hard-neck garlic that has has a thinner bulb wrapper that may have have vivid mauve colors to signal its strong, rich and deep flavor.  They have smaller cloves and require more time to peel.

Most subvarieties of Rocambole garlic are flavorful and very hot. They do not store as long as those of the Porcelain variety.

Go to the Garlic Department of the General Store to order our garlic online—we ship—it's a great gift for everyone but vampires.

We grow our garlic organically with rain and sun in a loam soil—amended with aged sheep manure— and weeded by hand with a hoe.  As with most crops, the nurture of garlic, where and how it was grown, the type of soil—its fertility—the amount of rainfall, etc., will  better determine its taste than the nature of garlic as described above

Click Garlic for information on how we grow it.

"@UnSqGreenmarket I happened to pick some of that garlic up by chance, actually. It looks terrific and the @catskillmerino people are sweet"

Thanks bonnefourchette

We did it!  The garlic is in and up in the hayloft drying.

Go to the Garlic Department of the General Store where you can buy two Porcelain varieties, German White and Musik; and we have a Rocambole variety called Merino for sale too. 

Plus, we offer a Garlic Sampler with all three varieties that we grew this year.

When I returned from Paris in the early 80's, I continued my study of painting at the Arts Students League on West 57th Street. 

I attended classes in Life Drawing taught by Robert Beverly Hale and classes in Abstract Painting taught by Richard Pousette-Dart, the former was a Curator of American Art at the Metropolitan Museum and the latter had paintings in the Met's Abstract Expressionist collection displayed alongside the drip paintings of Jackson Pollack; but no matter the aestehtic wisdom these two may have passed along to me, what I remember when I look through the viewfinder of my Nikon, poised to photograph my sheep, was from a less hearalded painting instructor at the League, Peter Golfinopoulis who said, "A work is it's context."  

Here, I photograph the context of the clouds and the text of the sheep.