Kentucky ain't southern France

So I really, really like living in Kentucky. It has four seasons, unlike Texas which has approximately 1.05 seasons. There's usually a real winter, sometimes with snow. Spring and fall are (usually) glorious. Summer is nice and hot, which makes all the veggies and fruit grow. The problem is that when it's hot, it is frequently also humid, e.g., H^3 (H cubed for some of you out there), Hazy, Hot and Humid. Right now it's H^3. Good weather for either staying inside (IMHO) in the AC or sitting out in the shade with an overhead fan blowing directly on you drinking both iced tea and something alcoholic AND cold.

So I went out to the orchard, as well as gathered the eggs and checked for mushrooms (shittake). Even though it rained last week, a lot, there was only one lousy mushroom ready to pick. Lots of eggs; the birds love this weather. Many of the apples look ripe but evidently aren't. There are a few peaches, on the not so good tree, as the really good tree got ripped up in a storm last year, and there isn't much left of it. No fruit. Sob.

I'd rather be back in France, where it's at least not humid. Some friends of ours are at the cottage right now, and they are speaking of it in glowing terms, at least to me, and only complaining about the spiders. They had been warned. Underneath all that stucco, drywall and plaster, there are stone walls that have been there for 600 years, and I suspect that the spiders have probably been in residence almost that long. What I need right now is a big waterbottle full of Bergerac rose from a spigot on a barrel down the road, chilled, out on the terrace, under a tree.

I have a couple of ducks. Maybe we'll have duck breasts cooked with peaches for dinner, along with corn on the cob (hardly a French combination, but you can get the stuff over there, after a fashion). That's cold weather food, though, and cold it's not.

Lillie