And then with the days getting longer, it is the light which starts the vigour of the coming blossom. The sun warms the naked ground, it sparkles in the cold shades. Leaves, lying on the ground, collect this limpid softness, these are the leaves of orchids. Today, we go onto these terrains which are getting brighter, we go among these stony and poor meadows. The limestone plateaus of the Lot still make themselves strongly known here. If one wants to have this penetrating feeling, one has to come here. If one wants to see flowerings following one another until autumn, one often returns or one remains. These meadows which one names also “dry meadows” constitute the heart of the plateau.
The affinities with the south are obvious. Even in winter, with the sun, this similarity of conditions remains remarkable. It is because of this resemblance that farmers planted fields of lavender here a few decades ago. Some of them are still discernable. With the lavender also arrived, but in a less official way, another Mediterranean that one finds firmly installed on the stony slopes of Fontoupine, the officinal salvia. It is one of the two places in the department where it can be found. It is also the case of the rue, another southern plant, and already brought in the open by Mr. Lagrèze-Fossat in 1847. I.e. well before the arrival of the lavender.
The asphodels also belong to these plants which will be found outside the plateau of Bouloc. They all demand heat, dryness, and poor soil. It is thanks to this characteristic that fragile and demanding plants live there. The orchids are their ambassadresses, and they are the ones who start the ball of flowering among the dry brushwood of the last summer. On the limestone scales a small saxifrage accompanies these pioniers; The family of peas is not long in covering the ground with yellow. There are some who prefer the marls, others are rather spread out between the broken stones. Then, after a few days of prudence, it is the take-off. We are on the door step of May, and birds, insects, and reptiles are there to meet them.
If heat makes itself already felt, it stimulates even more these light-loving plants. The white and yellow sun-roses are spread out over the ground, the bindweeds add pink to this white and yellow. These are carpets of flowers, and this surface is all the more amazing if one notices how slim and small these plants are. Flaxes, tiny shrubs, join this festival. The days lengthen, and the heat becomes stronger. The plants, to limit their perspiration, are equipped with hairs, downs, and leaves covered with a film or a glaze.
Other plants join in the dance. These small gray bushes so abundant on these meadows, of which one crumples the leaves believing, wrongly, that they are aromatic, expose hundreds of small pink tufts, which throw into a frenzy all the pollen gathering insects in the surroundings. The Leuzée, the pine cone, grows near to the ground, it protects its flowers behind a cone of blond scales. It is a not very common plant. It has neighbours which adopted similar solutions, the cardoncelle, the stem less spear thistle, this one will flower later, in colours of fire. Daisies with the totally yellow flowers, the inulas of the mountain, mix with the aromatic immortelle and the blue everlasting. We are at the beginning of June.
We discover in the marl kinds of lilies with star studded flowers, white, delicate and fragile between our soles and the sharp corners of the stones sticking out of the ground. Among all those in love of the sun, there is one which fills space. Not only the ground, but also the air. At some ten centimetres high a flimsy expanse is spread out, which undulates in a breath. They are the grasses which characterize the landscape of the steppes. They were abundant during the ice ages, the time before the forests. Today we find back a bit of what it looked like before history started.
As time goes on, seeds scatter around on our passing by. For certain plants, the beautiful season is over. But others are persistent. The garlics raise their floral pole, species close to clover, close to mint, close to the eyelets continue to offer nectar, and pollen to the insects. The farandole does not really stop, it is we who do not move any more. We remain in the shade, at rest, it is too hot. If the downpour of a storm waters the cracked ground, these drops will stimulate another flowering of some of the desiccated stems.
We are in August. The meadow is made of straw and of bronze. It vibrates at the rhythm of the locusts, the crickets, and the grasshoppers. Small umbellifers and asters have appeared, arrive the aspérules, the odontites, cousins of the snapdragon. The first fresh nights and the dew have the effect of another spring, the globular, the immortelle, the flax, wild thyme, enlighten themselves with new corollas in the alleviated light of September. The days get shorter, the sun still gives bright mornings and afternoons, the fruits fall, the seeds scatter, the insects grow still after a last jump, the birds have fallen silent or are gone. A breath of wind scatters some petals, and on the brushwood one or two leaves are still stirring which the wind ends up carrying away. The gray sky is reflected on the ground. November and the night.
But the leaves of orchids are already coming out, also the light of spring is preparing itself under our feet. If the ground is not stolen from under them.