The Cow-Dog days of Summer

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Summer has crept into Suisse Romande in the last few weeks arriving on the heels of several days of chilly wind and rain coming late in June. Suddenly we are baking in a steamy souffle of rolling afternoon heat filled with flurries of tiny bugs, rough perfumes of farmland crops and baking woodland forests, and the sounds of neighbors splashing in their pools and watering their lawns and flowerbeds in the late afternoons and into the darkness of the very late nights we keep here. It gets dark around 10:30 and that is when the evening coolness breathes life into the villages and street side cafes and bistros.  Man is it hot.

"Switzerland" usually conjures up visions of the snow covered Matterhorn and the Riccola alpine horn players with snow capped alps in the background, but in summer Suisse Romande can be roasting. The temperatures have been in the high eighties the last few weeks, touching ninety in the shade, and the humidity is sticky and unremitting. The afternoons put everyone into a torpor. Yesterday afternoon as I drove through a small farming village nearby I came across several small herds of cattle huddled in the shade, ears flattened down, eyes closed, unmoving. They looked completely gassed. At our house the cats and dogs lay in the coolest part of the house panting faintly. A few days ago I went  out and bought an air conditioner for our bedroom in hopes that we could sleep at night.

Although it was the size of a large mini fridge and had an instruction booklet written in fourteen languages it turned out to be a pathetic machine. It blew an anemic stream of tepid air up towards the ceiling and the exhaust, which I vented out the window, felt like the same temperature as the air blowing into our room. Hours after I had turned it on the room felt exactly the same as it had before. The next day I went out and bought an old fashioned fan and we found that much more to our liking as we turned it on us at full power all night and kept the air in the room moving. Even the dogs came up and slept  where the fan could blow on them.

Changes in the farmland have suddenly become obvious. The fields of colza have gone caramel colored and the wheat fields are the yellow color of straw with a pale under wash of dark green. Corn fields that were calf high seemingly for weeks are suddenly chest and head high and are visibly growing inches each day. The sunflower fields are just opening into yellow, and the dark green plants are growing thick and burly. The upshot of all this is that the markets are overflowing with gorgeous produce from the surrounding areas.

The apricots and nectarines are dark colored and dead ripe when you buy them in the markets. 

They last one day in the fridge, so its best to eat them the same day you buy them. Having lived on the green picked industrial fruit that we mostly get in southern California we find the fruit here is magnificent. The eggplants, beans and peppers are exquisite too. Locally grown produce is a subtle luxury and we are enjoying it immensely. Our backyard is filled with berry bushes and we are picking several pints a week of raspberries, strawberries and red and black currants. Crushing them in your mouth they seemingly explode with tart earthy juices the flavor of summer and happiness.

The major challenge now is cold drinks. At bistros and restaurants the beers and sodas are served cool, but not really cold, you know, like ice cold, and with the heat they are soon tepid. We don't really fret over it though. We eat, we talk, we sip our drinks and bask in the ambiance of hot summer nights filled with interesting friends, good conversation,  and good food. We are living in the warm, slow lane of Europe's summer, and it is a subtle, languorous pleasure.