Indian Summer

I stir the saucepan with the sticky mixture of quince cheese bubbling gently over a low heat and the breeze is warm coming through the open door of the kitchen.

Tod's sourdough breads are cooking in the oven, filling the air with a yeasty, beery smell.

Later, as I rake up the conkers down at the cottage I am grateful for the shade of the horse chestnut tree across my bare shoulders.

The farms around are already cleared of their crops except for the sunflowers, which are scorched black and bent double.  They too will be gone soon.  And then where will the family of quails and the hare who sits on our chemin rural taunting Bertie hide from the guns that start in earnest next weekend?

We talk about going to our favourite crêperie this evening, to sit outside in the courtyard in the fading light - a rare treat this year. There won't be many more occasions between now and the end of September when she closes til next April.

In August, when friends stayed, we supped indoors, had soup, turned on the underfloor heating and worried that their summer-weight duvets were not warm enough.  They left as the warm weather that vanished at the end of June coyly returned.

I have forgotten what it means to have to water the pots along the veranda every evening.

We regret our friends did not come in September.  And then the muck spreader starts work in the neighbouring fields.  And we think, lovely though the weather is, perhaps it was as well they didn't come this week!

Promise of soup for the autumn