Summer to Fall

We moved from summer to fall last week with crashing storms, a bit of sun and then a day of steady rain. Now, the breezes that brush us while standing in the shade hint of the crisp, cool nights that follow. Pears and apples are ripening along with the figs and it's clear the quinces will follow soon. Our friends with vineyards wait patiently for the grapes to reach their peak. Because the summer's heat was spotty this year, the vendage, or harvest, is weeks later than the past few years. With the storms blowing in cooler air, the vintners will wait a bit longer yet.

These booming tempests put our Mont Ventoux plans on hold as well. Both Thursday and again on Friday, we'd set our alarms for 5 am in anticipation of heading up the mountain to catch the sunrise. Skies need to be clear, not covered with clouds, to see the sun's first rays but that wasn't happening so we headed back to bed each time and decided to give the plan and ourselves a rest.

We discovered Friday morning that thunder wasn't the only thing that crashed during the night; our electricity did too and we were in a state when we discovered our fuse box was the cause, not the power lines.

Now, I don't know from fuses. We had them when I was a child but, at home in Minneapolis, we have circuit breakers instead. Here we have a combo plate of switches that look like breakers but that contain fuses inside.

Our main switch/fuse was tripped and kept tripping every time we tried to right it. We headed to our friends at the hotel for a small electricity lesson on how to sort things out. Bernard kindly explained that we needed to flip all the switches to off, turn the main one to on and then flip the others on--one by one--until one of them triggered the main switch to fail. Then we'd have our culprit narrowed down. So we did and soon had power everywhere but the second floor. Better.

Yes, the whole second floor. The bathroom, WC, hallway, and my bedroom--plus the upper terrace too--are all wired on the same fuse. So, I scratched my head for a while and then realized that my wall electric heater had probably sent the whole mess toppling like dominoes. It had rained in my open window the night before and the heater is hard-wired right below. Why it's there and not in a different spot is any bodies guess and only something the former owners of our house could answer. (Along with why the whole second floor and terrace were on just a single fuse.) But, we let the heater dry out while we went to lunch and all was well when we returned.

And what an excellent lunch! In Malaucene, a nearby village, there's a lovely little spot with a pleasant terrace that serves a tasty, three course lunch for 15 euros. Sometimes the food is better than others but this day everything was spot on. The lobster bisque studded with baby scallops, salmon with Bearnaise sauce and figs poached in red wine took the edge off of two 5 am false starts and our power failure very nicely. Once I added the cost of my share of our pitcher of local rose, my total bill came to 16 euros. Since the sun chose to shine that afternoon before hiding later behind newly arriving clouds, we had a perfect interlude.

Saturday was stinky. There's no other way to put it. It poured steadily most of the day, canceling one of last of the village's evening markets and drenching us as we made our way to friends for dinner. While not the barbecue they'd planned, we had a pleasant evening that made up for the lost day and wandered home under the beginning of clearing skies.

This time of year seems to bring out a rash of vide greniers, loosely translated as attic emptiers. They're flea markets and a village called Sahune had been leafleting our area liberally to let us know their event was happening the first weekend of September. On Sunday,we hopped in the car under spotlessly scrubbed blue skies to see what the town had to offer in the way of junk.

Junk they had, spread on table after table up and down the main street and across the bridge to the display of antique tractors--all six of them. They also had a helicopter buzzing overhead plus a man with a mike hawking tickets for their upcoming town bean feed. No junk for us and we passed on the food as well. We've discovered French group dinners are often like our own in the States--edible but not wows by any means.

Back home in time for a late Sunday lunch, I whipped up a batch of fish soup using bits of leftover mussels with their cooking broth, fresh tomatoes we'd purchased at a roadside market earlier that day, plus some baby shrimp tucked in our freezer. A half hour later, I splashed in a jot of Pastis for extra flavor and we sat and marveled how much difference a shiny day can make in one's general attitude towards life.

Next: The to-do list.