Summer is winding down

People are getting in their last beach trip before they leave this weekend.

The merchants are glassy-eyed having been open 7/7 since mid-June. Soon the stores will close Sunday afternoon until Tuesday mornings as well as for their three-hour siesta at noon.

Local children shop for their new book bags, pencil cases, pens and notebooks, which they show to the tourist children. Their voices from the street below float through my window as I write.

The teachers from St. Etienne are packing up, but this year they are leaving their daughter who is “reading” elementary education at Perpignan University. She will live in their house all year. She learned English-English so she reads a subject rather than studies it.

The first squash has appeared in the green grocers, although there are still plenty of summer fruits. I await the walnuts, kaki fruit and pumpkin.

The sun no longer shines from 5:00-22:00 as in June, and the street dances always need the lamplights when they start at 21:00.

The newspaper says the sanglier hunt is about to start. Last year over 7000 boars were shot in the region. The man who sells saucisson will be able to replenish his supply of sanglier saucisson. The year I lived in Toulouse, the butcher at Christmas had a boar hanging from a peg outside his shop. Each day there was less as locals chose the section they wanted for the Christmas dinner.

When the vendage will start is being debated. Some of the smaller green grapes are almost ready, but the red need a couple of more weeks, although when I passed a vineyard they hung heavy on the vine. They looked ripe to me, but what do I know? I am a city girl at heart.

In September there will be another smaller group of tourists, older people, who no longer have children in school.

I am getting calls and emails asking when I’ll be back in Geneva. It depends on my last round of guests. Although I wrote a lot this summer, I find myself thinking of my winter writing schedule, my writing friends, walking along Lake Lehman, filet des perches, and a fondue at the Café du Soleil, the chestnut stand near the Gare Cornavin.

Summer is winding down.