roadsides, ditches, vacant lots, and the wild garrigue scrubland that surrounds us are all full of plants like this. they punish any effort to move among them with wicked lacerations and puncture wounds, never mind what it’s like trying to pick them with anything less than thick leather gloves. fortunately, when it comes to the human fauna of this region, and despite almost every cliché about the prickly French temperament, we are almost universally greeted with mediterranean warmth, and physical affection. i will miss the casual intimacy of the double cheek kiss as a greeting when we get back to chilly minnesota.

a particularly evil mediterranean  thistle (scolymus grandiflorus)

along the mediterranean near sète, france