My first memories are very clear. First of all, Paris: the window displays at Galeries Lafayette at Christmas time, the wooden blocks I stack in my playpen. The Eiffel Tower framed in the window of my dark but plush apartment. The atmosphere is hushed, as it should be in the capital’s 7th arrondissement.

My first olfactory emotions, I dare say, were linked to… the metro. The scent filtering through the air vents on Avenue de Suffren as my mother’s baby carriage passed moved me. It’s a dense, metallic fragrance, like two flints struck against each other, giving off an electric shock to the solar plexus…

Fortunately, my childhood wasn’t always urban. In 1954, I was four years old. My mother, sister and I moved to the country, south of Paris, because my father, a career soldier, was leaving for Indochina. He spent two years there, followed by two years in Algeria.

These four years take place in the Beauceron village of Pussay, surrounded as far as the eye can see by fields of wheat, beet and corn. The hedges have been torn down. Only a few rare copses mark the edges of the only valley that breaks the monotony of the endless plain. Countless high-voltage power lines, supported by colossal pylons, dominate the landscape. Beauce in the 1950s is the height of modernism!

At the time, I wasn’t at all critical of my environment. I was perfectly happy there, except that my father was absent. My mother gave me my first lessons in botany as the seasons changed. In spring, the embankments are adorned with yellow dandelion flowers, at least those we haven’t picked for crunchy salads. In summer, the fields are adorned with a few blueberries – but they will soon disappear: progress is on the march. Along with camomile, daisies and poppies, we occasionally pick patriotic bouquets.

Most of my life is spent in our garden. The only thing separating it from our neighbor’s, an elderly gentleman who adores us, is a low, carefully trimmed hedge made up of a variety of species. I’m learning to distinguish between hawthorn and blackthorn: both of these superb spring-flowering shrubs have sharp thorns, but hawthorn has dissected leaves and red fruit, while blackthorn has whole leaves, just a little toothed, and blue fruit – terribly astringent if bitten too early, only softened a little by frost. I can make out the hornbeam with its finely toothed leaves and the privet with its smooth ones. In season, it bears small clusters of sweetly scented flowers, followed by black balls whose wine-red pulp can be used for stencilling. At the foot of this ever-changing hedge nestle primroses of horticultural origin in mixed colors, yellow and white, pink and purplish, delicate spring bouquets corseted with embossed leaves. Accompanying them are shy, fragrant violets that thrill me when I poke my nose into their tight tufts to inhale their enchanting fragrance.

The garden at Pussay is a magical world where my senses are awakened. Only infancy is capable of perceiving the essence of this universe. After that, it’s too late: children have learned to set limits to their thinking, and gradually stop perceiving what adults can’t see. There’s no question of meeting elves and pixies in pointy hats who come to whisper metaphysical secrets and reveal the meaning of life to me. The reality is much simpler, but just as wonderful – and ultimately accessible to all those who are capable of rediscovering their childlike soul.

It’s first and foremost the discovery of the world of the senses, which only nature can truly offer. First of all, sight: what a pleasure to observe the delicate blue of a forget-me-not flower, so tender, or the gleaming yellow of ranunculus. By placing a flower under my sister’s chin, I could tell from the golden sheen that she liked butter – not surprising, with a Breton grandmother who never came to see us without a huge lump of salted butter.

The sense of hearing plays a lesser role in the plant world, but we can enjoy listening to the crackling fruits of the spurge spurge.^[1] which explode violently to spread their seeds, and the murmur of the wind as it glides like a caressing hand over the pine needles. Its song takes me back to our garden, where our neighbor, Monsieur Villette – we called him Monsieur Violette – had planted a Scots pine and a black pine for my sister and me.

While everyone knows the exquisite velvetiness of a rose petal, very few have had the chance to touch the tinder plant. The tinder plant is a woody mushroom^[2] which grows on the trunks of beech trees. It’s made up of special fibers, and when you cut it into thin slices, an extraordinary phenomenon happens between your fingers: a tiny piece of tinder spreads out in all directions, becoming supple and soft as deer – and then some. It thins, spreads and grows in inconceivable ways. What a voluptuous sensation! Tinder is softer than a baby’s skin, unwinding it more sensual than touching a woman. At the time, I was content to feel the caress of the grass under my bare feet. I brush my hands against the rough bark of the walnut tree before clumsily attempting to climb it… and painfully rasping my arms and legs. I graze with delight over the curly moss like a lamb’s fleece, which takes advantage of the hedge’s shade to spread out among the grass.

The sense of smell opens up a whole world of emotions. In summer, I love it when our neighbor mows the grass in his garden to harvest the hay that will later feed his rabbits. In the evening, the cut greenery spreads heady fragrances in the tepid air rising from the ground, which I breathe in at the top of my lungs. I stand there for a long time, window open, drawing strength to nourish my young soul.

Even as a child, I loved the scent of rain. I look forward, after a heavy day when the air is too still, to seeing the sky darken and the heavy drops begin to fall. As the crackling rain intensifies, the earth and plants exhale a suave, powerful perfume like amber. The light takes on violet hues and often pale flashes of lightning streak the sky. My heart bursts with joy.

Other, more serene scents are still being expressed. On my way out into the garden, I rarely fail to crumple a sprig of mint and then bring my fragrant fingers to my nostrils. What freshness! While the opulent roses intoxicate me with their heady fragrances, the reds dense but subtle, the yellows tender and tangy. I’d love to find the names of the varieties my parents grew: today’s roses are so bland… Ah, the astonishing scent of large boxwood cut into a ball, an ideal hiding place for the Easter gifts brought to us by the bells returning from Rome! You can’t really see the box flowers: they’re greenish and tiny, but they’re easy on the nose, emanating a delectable caramel aroma that’s strikingly reminiscent of a confectioner’s store. It’s hardly comparable to the aroma of fruity vanilla wafers just out of the oven, intensely emitted by the enormous flower heads.^[3] of the acanthus-leaved carline, which adorns the dry lawns of the Midi mountains.

Taste is the prince of the senses, because it combines all the others. To taste well, we must first see, and we taste best what is beautiful. With a few exceptions, such as medlar and chard, which are ominously brown yet creamy, sweet and aromatic. In the past, medlars and corm trees were commonly planted in hedges, for the beauty of their foliage: large, slightly coppery leaves for the former, elegantly cut into multiple leaflets for the latter. The hardness of their wood and the pleasure of their fruit, enjoyed as is, in compote, jam or wine, also counted. Today, medlars and corms have been forgotten, except by a few enthusiasts, as the hedges have mostly disappeared and the berries look unappetizing: they are thought to be damaged, even rotten, whereas in fact they are overripe, transforming inedible, bitter and terribly astringent corms into vegetable delights worthy of the legendary Tropics.

Taste itself is made up solely of sweet, salty, sour and bitter flavors. Astringent and pungent, physical sensations, complete them. Similarly, we need to take into account the texture of food, which can be crunchy, soft, elastic, fibrous or melting… When we speak of “taste”, we usually include the sense of smell, or rather the retro-olfaction without which a dish cannot be appreciated. Taste and smell are intimately linked: cruel torment, it’s impossible to appreciate food when you’ve got a cold and your nose is completely blocked… Even hearing can be involved. Just think of the salivation provoked by the crisp sound of a well-baked puff pastry or the skin of Peking duck. And could you bite into a carrot without a rabbit nibble?

Context counts too. Cherries are never better than on the tree. The strawberries I enjoy in our Pussay garden are so much more delectable than the ones my mother buys in little wooden trays. We also have a few white strawberry plants, which are astonishing not only for their color, but also for their extremely sweet, fragrant flavor. I pull out the carrots from the garden and gnaw on them, just running them under water. Every day, as I pass by, I pick a few young pea pods whose tender, juicy, sweet green seeds burst between my teeth.

The education of my taste buds began very early. Whether it’s in the countryside, where we eat vegetables from the garden, or in the city, where the twice-weekly market supplies us. The watchwords are freshness and quality. My mother spends hours every day preparing elaborate dishes for us. Never preserves or ready-made meals, unworthy of an attentive wife and mother. That’s how I got my taste for good things.

Behind our garden stretches another, a wild one, as its owners, two very old ladies, are hardly in a position to look after it. They have kindly let us enlarge a hole in the fence that separates us from their home. So my sister and I have access to a world that’s a little clandestine and a little worrying, because at the far end is the “château” woods, the former home of the director of the shoe factory that’s been bankrupt since the end of the war. No one lives there, and the large wood, once a well-kept park, is now abandoned. The undergrowth is thick and tangled, the ground is covered with thick ivy – and the forest spirits certainly haunt it.

In any case, strange noises emerge from the half-light that reigns here even in broad daylight, causing us to tremble with a fright tinged with pleasure. The rustling of leaves, the occasional dull thump, the beating of wings high up in the branches, a small, quickly muffled cry… I don’t yet know how to decipher nature, but I can sense the existence of a small animal population taking refuge in the dense vegetation.

My mother allows me, an ignorant child, to put names to these mysterious creatures. I learn to identify the unsettling call of the tawny owl that pierces the night, the languorous cooing of turtle-doves in the early morning, the chirping of blue tits and the trilling song of the wren, one of the smallest birds, adorable with its curled tail. Thanks to all these trees, the avifauna is particularly diverse. Occasionally, I also come across two red squirrels, who fearlessly come and fill their bellies with walnuts from our walnut tree before my amazed eyes.

So many emotions are linked to these discoveries, as my senses are awakened. Only poetry could express the magic of these blessed moments… I’ll wait until I’m eleven before I dare to venture out alone into the castle woods, which have become even more impoverished since my tender years. But then nothing scares me any more, as I often sneak out of my bedroom window in the middle of the night and go into the garden next door to gorge myself on large Napoleon cherries until I’m sick to my stomach. But the feeling that I too belong to this wilderness, miraculously allowed to express itself, is beginning to give meaning to my life.

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^[1] This tall, upright-stemmed plant bears ruffs of leaves and curious green flowers, the female part of which forms large, pendulous balls – beware, its abundant latex is highly irritating.

^[2] The consistency of the wood.

^[3] Flower heads are the “flowers” of Compositae, in fact inflorescences formed of tiny tube- or tongue-shaped flowers, densely inserted next to each other on the enlarged top of the stem. They are characteristic of plants in the Compositae family, such as dandelion or dahlia.