Sun, Sun, Sun, Here It Comes
Friday, 29 August
This summer was all about that blazing ball in the sky. Day after day. From dawn…
…until dusk…
…we felt its fire.
And we were lucky. Our arid heat in the Perche was nothing compared to the south, where temperatures regularly soared to 40°C/104°F and beyond, where French forest fires contributed to Europe’s most devastating year: so far over one million hectares (2.5 million acres) have burned.
It seemed to David and me that all we did this summer was grapple with the elements. To manage the hot air, we opened windows at night and let colder air circulate, then closed them (including the 10 skylights upstairs) and the shutters the next morning; during the day we lived in the dark. But at least we stayed relatively cool behind our 450-year old walls.
To combat the effects of the fiery sun on the scorched earth, we regularly watered the garden and the new trees, fortunately to good effect (more on that in an essay this autumn!).
It may have seemed that's all we did, but of course it wasn't. We had a weekend trip to the Loire for a birthday celebration where we did some touring…
…and a wedding in Sweden, where we also spent a few sunny days with Danish friends in their sweet farmhouse…
Friends and family visited us.
As have the neighbourhood badgers and boar, night after night. In search of worms and other critters, they have time and again uprooted plants in our garden...
...and dug holes. Fun fact: you know which animal is behind which infraction. The badgers scratch with their claws (above) and the earth collects behind. The boars use their snouts and the unearthed matter is hollowed out in porcine-proboscis shapes:
The destruction has led us to be more and more creative in our preventative measures. I tried spicy curry powder on the worst afflicted such as the unearthed santolina above (sage and hydrangea are their preferred targets). Our handyman Samuel suggested distributing human hair, which he procured from his friend the coiffeuse in Bellême. Florie our gardener said a radio had worked at her sister's and set one up during the dry nights while we were in Sweden. She sent me a text message, saying she'd changed the channel from France Inter (news and culture station) to Sweet FM to keep the boar on their trotters. "They're just like us humans," she said. "They get used to everything."
I'm not sure about the curry powder, but the hair made no difference - thankfully because Yuck - whilst the radio appears to have had some effect. We bought another one, as well as sun-powered ultrasound stakes that promise to drive the intruders away. The cacophony certainly drives me crazy and plays havoc with my night's sleep. It's quieter in our Paris bedroom. The jury is still out, however, on how much destruction the noise actually deters.
But even this summer challenge comes back to the sun: the boar and the badgers are coming chez nous because they can find more to eat in our watered garden than in the super dry corn fields and woods beyond.
Their insistence certainly made us even more eager for rain, which as the days went by, began to feel like waiting for the tooth fairy or, for the more existentially inclined of you, Godot. But last week down it finally came and in buckets, all day. After the deluge the world was another place. Plant and animal life (including canine and human!) were visibly invigorated. The following week was an Edenic end to summer.
But the sun did wear us out...
...and we weren't unhappy to drive back to Paris yesterday, ahead of the holiday-making hordes who will return this weekend. Best of all was the presage of more rain to come on my walk with Tasha in the Tuileries this morning.
I took this rainbow flash as a good omen for a felicitous rentrée. I wish you the same.