It still amazes me that it is now mid October, and yet the temperature remains hovering around 24 degrees in the afternoon, and the sun continues to shine.
We had a white hot August, with little rain and temperatures up into the late 30s for much of the month. The sunflowers bloomed and then crisped on the stalks; the fields cracked and the rivers evaporated into streams. The shutters of the stone houses remained shut, leaving the villages looking deserted to the bemused visitors....
... whilst the locals stayed cool inside the metre thick walls of their old houses, only stepping out in the relative cool of the evening to chat over dinner on the terracotta tiled terraces.
September cooled slightly, taking the temperatures down to a more comfortable 30 - 35 degrees, and still the sun shone and the rain remained absent. The farmers returned to the fields, and the harvest activity gathered pace. The sunflowers were gathered in, having been allowed to dry, the beautiful golden faces now drooping and brown..
The mechanical harvesters rumbled through the plum orchards; side by side the machines rolled slowly through the avenues of trees; one shaking and one collecting the tumbling fruit. As they progressed into the distance, the gentle shake of the topmost branches marked their gentle progress.
And as we have gradually moved into October, the activity has slowed. The last cut has been made to the fields, and the hay bales have been slowly gathered in. The huge water pipes and reels have been loaded back on to trailers, and trundled back to the farms, and the last loads of tobacco leaves and maize have been taken back for drying.
In this part of france, there is a special cadence to the seasons - a rhythm that I had been barely aware of, whilst back in England. Maybe it is because I spent so much of my time in concrete and steel offices under harsh artifical lights, or queuing in thick knots of traffic, but I don't remember the clarity of each season.
Maybe it is the passage of the farmers in this rural landscape that provide the tempo, the landscape that provides the harmony, or maybe I just have the time now to smell, see and hear the clarity of the music.
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