Late September

I've worn myself out with all those posts about making cheese in Auvergne. Now I need to take a little break. I still have photos of the town of Salers and others from Auvergne that I want to post, but later.

Walt and I have been busy doing garden and yard work for a week now. He's trimming the hedge, after earlier having cut enough firewood for our upcoming winter. We had a little rainy spell, but that ended a week ago. I can't believe it is already September 25.

Raking up leaves is hard work, but at least the weather
is conducive — it's warm and dry.

My contribution to the Great Hedge Trimming Project is the clean-up. I'm raking up and carrying wheelbarrow loads of clippings from the front of the house out to a pile in the back yard by the vegetable garden plots. One garden plot is now cleaned up for the winter — we pulled out all the corn stalks and lima bean bushes — so it will be the spot where we burn yard trimmings this fall. I hope we'll be able to burn all the hedge clippings, even though they are very green.

Out in the vineyard, the harvest is under way. There doesn't seem
to be much hurry, however, because of the dry sunny weather.

Over the past week, I've also picked and roasted half a dozen big red peppers. Now I need to peel them and get them packed into plastic containers for the freezer. We've been trying to eat out of the freezer as much as possible (lasagne, moussaka, and other good things are in there) to make room for more tomatoes (mostly as sauce) and the roasted red peppers.

Red bell peppers from the garden, for roasting

The weather is beautiful right now. It was just slightly nippy yesterday, with a dry cool breeze, but it was bright sunny and dry. Very pleasant.

The garden is still producing reds (tomatoes
and peppers) and greens (chard and collards).

People here keep talking about Indian Summer — l'été indien or l'été de la Saint-Martin — but it's too early for all that, I think. This is just fine September weather. Une belle arrière-saison. La Saint-Martin falls on November 11. We'll see if we are having warm sunny weather at that late date. If so, the expression will be appropriate.