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.