05 August 2011

Gray, muggy weather

The weather has turned damp and muggy. That's fairly unusual here. It's not exactly raining, but there's a fine mist under gray skies and the ambient humidity is very high. In French they would call such weather lourd — heavy. Il n'y a pas d'air — in other words, no breeze at all. This morning's low temperature is about 20ºC, or 70ºF. It should be a lot cooler than that.

Hard winter?

Folk wisdom says that when bushes that produce berries in summer and fall are really loaded down, that means the winter will be harsh. Look at the pyracantha in the photo above. It's growing over a wall in the neighbors' garden. I hope that the dry, warm springtime caused the profusion of berries this year, and that it doesn't foreshadow anything.

Lots of berries

Meanwhile, the grapes out in the vineyard are rapidly ripening, but they probably won't be ripe as early as the vignerons thought they would back in June, when the weather was sunny, warm, and dry. It's still warm, but the sun is not being generous, as they say. No date for the vendanges has been set yet. Normally, the grape harvest starts in mid-September.

Grapes ripening in the Renaudière vineyard

Out in the vegetable garden, our tomatoes are just barely starting to ripen. We planted them fairly late, and last year we didn't get a bumper crop of tomatoes until the last half of September and into October, if I remember correctly. That's something to look forward to.

8 comments:

  1. Love the photos today and yes fresh tomatoes are something to look forward to. Ours came on all at once and are almost gone now.

    Have you ever tried to freeze ratatouille? We've been eating lots of that lately.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oooh... can't wait to see your tomatoes when they come in!

    I had never heard that local wisdom about berry plants.

    Tiens... when we use lourd to talk about the weather, I forget how to phrase it: Il fait lourd.? Il fait un temps lourd.? Il est lourd.? Of course, I know that we usually use Il fait with weather expressions, but I had it in my head to wonder if lourd used Il est for some reason. What about with gris?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Il fait lourd aussi chez moi.
    Et le temps est gris, brouillasseux. (Actually the sun just got out and it will be beautiful).
    Ken, yesterday I cooked collard greens in my pressure cooker with chicken broth. It was delicieux!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Chilly, rainy weather in Paris for the past two days.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi Nadège, glad you enjoyed the collard greens.

    Starman, I heard on the weather report that there was heavy rain in Paris today. We had just one short shower, about an hour ago.

    Evelyn, no, I've never tried to freeze ratatouille, but I've frozen tomatoes, eggplant, and summer squash separately. I don't see why it wouldn't work.

    Judy, comme a dit Nadège, il faut lourd, un temps lourd. Il fait gris, un temp gris. C'est couvert. C'est gris gris gris.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Merci bien, Nadège et Ken :))

    Euh... brouillasseux = drizzly? drizzling?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Very nice photo of berries and grapes, thanks.

    ReplyDelete

What's on your mind? Qu'avez-vous à me dire ?