Perhaps that is a low estimate.

What I did not know about the things growing within a couple hundred yards of where we live, here in the south of France … well, it might have been more like a thousand things.

This came to us on something of an accidental journey.

In the previous week, posters went up that seemed to suggest we could “follow in the path of Perpetua” — the Roman Catholic saint who appears to be the patroness of the town.

That sounded to us like a tour of the historical aspects of the community, and we have lots questions about the chateau, and the bigger buildings, and the church and the history of the place, which goes back a thousand years … and, sure, we would like to do that tour.

Instead, the tour went directly up into the rocky hills north of town, and the “trail of Perpetua” was a misunderstanding of intent. This was a nature tour, not a history tour.

And while in the garden of nature I was made to feel like a fool (and not for the first time) in regards to anything that grows in God’s green earth.

Among the fruits and flowers growing wild:

–Berries of several sorts, including blackberries and currants.

–Fruit trees including figs, olives, pomegranate and bitter (and sweet) almonds, and something that might be an apple tree.

–Herbs of several sorts. Thyme, rosemary, mustard, lavender, borage (good for salads) and medicinal clover.

–Wild flowers of many kinds including orchids, marigolds, irises and daffodils.

–Wild asparagus, some of the lettuce-like, slightly bitter growth called rocket here (arugula in the U.S.), as well as acorns by the bushel lying on the ground. (Where are wild boars, when you need them?)

We had all this pointed out to us as part of a group of more than 50 people who turned up in the main place of the town and went into the fields in an outing that lasted more than 2.5 hours — and dragged mostly seniors, intrepid souls, over some steep and slippery trails.

The woman who led the tour made clear that about half of everything we saw was edible or possibly medicinal or useful in some way.

I was impressed, again, how much “old” people know.

The tour was in French, and because of the size of the crowd we often had trouble hearing the director. But we had things identified for us by an English woman who lives in the town. She grew up mostly in the country, in England, and she was calling out things to us even before the tour guide got around to them. “That would be asparagus, wouldn’t it?”

For the whole of the nature walk, we were on the property of someone else, but such is the bounty of this part of France that landowners pretty much ignore their wild fruits, berries and flowers, and a person would not be discouraged from picking them — the fruits and berries, in particular.

So, yes, we have this cornucopia of growing things just outside the town, and we may avail ourselves of some of it, in a month or three.