Shades of lilac and lavender

Lavender's blue dilly dilly

Lavender's green

If I am king dilly dilly

You shall be queen

Call up your men dilly dilly

Set them to work

Some to the plough dilly dilly

Some to the cart

Some make hay dilly dilly

Some to cut corn

While you and I dilly dilly

Keep ourselves warm

Lavender's green dilly dilly

Lavender's blue

If you love me dilly dilly

I will love you.

This was one of the first love songs to send shivers down by spine. I was in the infants at the time , about four or five years old. Whenever I see lavender I think of this nursery rhyme and the lovely romantic feelings it produced.

There is a lot of lavender in Provence in the South of France. Fields and fields of it and bushes and clumps everywhere you look. Big fat black and yellow bumble bees hover constantly over the bushes  but no need to worry about being stung. They are only interested in the lavender and you will find lots of jars of delicious lavender honey for sale thanks to their hard work. Another flower or more appropriately, shrub, that has lovely blooms in various shades 

of lilac is the Buddleia. It attracts butterflies and is supposed to keep away mosquitoes so is perfect for the Mediterranean climate. I like the fact that lavender and buddleia grow everywhere I like being too. They are just as much at home in an English garden,an Italian terrace and of course the South of France.

My favourite song for lavender fields has to be by Fiorella Mannoia I venti del cuore,  This is how it starts :)

Campi di lavanda e l'auto che va. 

Fields of lavanda and the car goes on...