15 minutes of drizzle isn’t RAIN!
The weather apps gave rain an up to 75% likelihood. There were thunderstorm warnings (correct as it turned out) and my rain radar app showed heavy rain and storms sailing right past us, maybe over us. But this plateau does things to the weather. It is hotter up here. Drier. The fog and clouds fill the valley and we drive out of them half way up the hill. We had more ice than the valley last winter. (It turns out everyone up here suffered freeze damage to their olives, artichokes, and some non-native plants, it wasn’t just us. There wasn’t anything I could have done!) The least predictable is the rain. Actually, the lack of rain is all we can predict
Summer nights when the grass is hay and the soil is dust we watch storms working their way all around the plateau but stopping short of the top. When we used to stay at the family house across from Andrée’s, the thunder would awakening us from sleep and we’d get up and sit on the stone steps in front to watch the lightening work its way around the skyline, each terrific flash turning night to day and making the trees and buildings cast the same weird shadows as an eclipse. More often than not, those summer heat storms didn’t bring rain to anyone. But sometimes we would watch the rain come in, a grey effervescence slowly obscuring our view of the mountains, of Cordes, of the valley as it worked its way carefully around the plateau.
But up here it stayed dry. Pretty much always. Mostly it is hotter here than the weather app predicts, and it is always drier. Last night was almost one such night.
It did actually rain for about 15 minutes in that light rain that you hope for when the ground is dry and needs to be reminded how to absorb water. At 6:30pm I declined both generous invitations to make use of a pool. It was still hot and I could hear rumbles of thunder, so I decided that by the time I got there and into the water I’d need to get out. Bad call. The few drops that fell then were a tease not a torrent and the longer “shower” later left tablecloths damp but no puddles. It was enough to fill the courtyard with that wonderful smell rather strangely called “Petrichor” in English (and according to DeepL “Pétricor” in French). Then it stopped. But our not-really-rain does provide a good excuse for a poem! We only got the first verse of Emily Dickinson’s lovely poem “Summer Rain” (published in 1890). The drops never got as far as helping the brook (or filling the well) let alone undusting the roads or leaving spangles in the trees, but they did briefly make me laugh as I ran outside to greet them.
A Summer Rain
A drop fell on the apple tree
Another on the roof
A half a dozen kissed the eaves
And made the gables laugh
A few went out to help the brook
That went to help the sea
Myself conjectured, Were they pearls
What necklaces could be!
The dust replaced in hoisted roads
The birds jocoser sung
The sunshine threw his hat away
The orchards spangles hung
The breezes brought dejected lutes
And bathed them in the glee
The East put out a single flag
And signed the fete away
(published in POEMS BY EMILY DICKINSON EDITED BY TWO OF HER FRIENDS, 1890)
What it did do is bring cooler weather. This morning it was distinctly cooler outside than in and we are both working hard to find jobs that “need to be done” outside. I am even able to sit in the courtyard to write this afternoon and the plants are not wilting.
Now I have friends and family off on long-awaited holidays that would be interrupted by rain. I hope they stayed warm and sunny with nothing to spoil the fun. If not, the heat returns in a few days and no more rain is threatened anywhere in Western Europe or Southern England as far as I can see, so things will pick up. Last year we accepted a gracious invitation to spend a few days at the cousins’ house in Cadaqués, and it would have been less wonderful had it rained (although there was a huge dry storm across the harbor one night). It was hot then, too (technically meeting the definition of “Canicule” — dangerously hot). We drove there and back with an a/c unit that blew hot air not cool, so I remember how hot it was then, too (it was hotter, but the visit was so worth it house and coastline are wonderful).
Meanwhile, an eaglette fell out of a nest in Great Bend, US (and ultimately fledged) , and the webcam footage made it to CBS news. The things we think are important, like June and the weather, are unpredictable. The rest is too much.
