Every Thing in its Season

As I pass my days driving about the oh-so-beautiful lanes of Creuse, I experience a continually renewed wonder at the immediacy of the seasons here. I've always been an outdoorsy sort of person, but not since I was a student, longing for those wonderful, lazy, library-free days of Summer, have I been so acutely aware of the passing months. Before coming to France, I spent most of my life in the south-east of England, where the seasons go through their cycles in a kind of lacklustre manner and don't seem to impinge very much on daily life.

 How different it is here! Things are rarely grey and boring in these parts; the weather has a tendency toward the extreme and one is never allowed to be unaware of the season. In the decade I have lived here, I have known temperatures as high as 43c and as low as -18c. Thankfully, both of these were abnormalities, but even so, the range does illustrate that we have proper, defined seasons.

And each one is a joy: the summer, of course, is wonderful with the long, long, sunny days, eating outdoors, late afternoons at one of the many local lakes, the countryside groaning with greenness and everything so drowsy and buzzy.






 

 Yet, by late summer, it's all beginning to get a bit too dry and heavy and the first showers of autumn are a real treat. Many flowers which disappear in the height of summer re-bloom in September, and coupled with the gorgeous autumn leaves, this is a very colourful time.

Plus, we have nature's bounty to enjoy: apples, chestnuts, pears, raspberries, blackberries, mushrooms. People spend every spare moment bottling, preserving and jam-making.

As winter begins to take over in December, there are stunning frosty mornings to enjoy, lots of startling blue skies, the stark beauty of the stripped-down landscape and usually at least one proper snowfall.

By March, we are all weary of the cold, so it is viscerally exciting to notice the buds forming and the first hints of green beginning to shade-in the landscape. For a while, it is as though everything is holding its breath and there is a great sense of anticipation in the air. Then comes a day with a certain balminess in the air and POW! ...it all bursts forth with life. Suddenly, I am again driving about surrounded by greenery and wild flowers. It's hard to express just how uplifting this annual renewal is, but the feeling is impossible to ignore and it affects everyone's spirits.


Then before we know it, les grandes vacances have arrived and everything is once again spooling down towards chestnut time and the smell of woodsmoke in the air.