NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON

October, 8 2013Indian summer lasted 2 days, quickly replaced by days of torrential rains, lightening, thunder, wind and hail the size of golf balls. Yet even the locals were seduced by those 2 days of blue skies and hot sun. The cusp of September/October is the time of the Vendemia here, the grape harvest, and every grower tries to squeeze the last of summer’s heat into the grapes in order to make them as strong and sweet as possible and perhaps, with luck, produce a wine that will be one of the vintage years.We’ve sat at harvest lunches in the past where we’ve watched the owner of the vineyard keep an eye on a sky darkening in the distance, watched him calculate down to the minute how much time he had left in order to pick every row before the rain came. Not everyone got it right this year. Many a vineyard waited a couple of hours too long, the result being mold on the grape or, in extreme cases, if the hail had its way, the harvest will have been completely robbed.It’s a meteorologist’s nightmare, forecasting here. In any ten-mile radius you can experience several weathers systems simultaneously. For instance, yesterday, what was only a late afternoon rainstorm here on the farm was, not 5 miles from here, a devastating hailstorm in the village and its surrounding fields, which within 10 minutes were blanketed white with hail. Olive groves within that area were severely damaged, the olives although still a month away from harvest are yet mature enough to sustain devastation as the hail pierces the skin.Although not a life or death situation for us, it has nevertheless, laundry-wise, been a week of constant surveillance as a load pegged on the line during brilliant sunshine must, 20 minutes later, be brought inside before the skies open, the result being a house that smells and looks like a Chinese laundry with sheets, towels and clothes hanging from every available curtain rod and stair rail.And the poor garden, the blossoms of which, after struggling through the heat of summer, finally breathed a sigh of relief, promising to bloom through October are now beaten down and probably, after today’s deluge, will start to rot in their containers.We, too, have been gauging our departure from the vine and will leave for Provence a little earlier than originally planned, the need for a bathtub and a fireplace calling these old bones. We, too, are trying to squeeze the last ounces of warmth into our skins, sitting outside in a sudden patch of sun, then dashing inside and putting on a sweater.And how beautiful it is here; the hills greening with the rains, the plowed earth sodden into chocolate clumps, steam rising from its depth where the last of summer’s heat still lingers. In the mornings, when we take our pre-breakfast walk, fog trails in the valleys, great swaths of it playing hide and seek with hills and forests, the air itself filled with a luscious aroma; a blend of earth and foliage, berry and river, bark and mushroom and fennel. Pomegranates hang from their branches like early Christmas ornaments and every bakery is scented with pane di santé, the season’s bread, studded with autumn’s raisins and walnuts. We eat whole chunks of it with pecorino cheese and a bowl of soup, savoring its moment because October is its only moment.White rainbowEven the sheep are on the move; the shepherd and his dogs herding them down the road late afternoon. For me, the sound of their bells, the trot of their feet, their sunlit fleece, the way they stop for a nibble here and there, the cry of the shepherd, pure joy, a thousand years alive in one moment.All these comings and goings; the sun’s, the rains’, the grapes and olives, the sheep, is the give and take of nature, replenishing us and moving us forward to our own departure. In a couple of weeks we’ll pack the car and drive north stopping in Milan for the opening of Joel’s exhibition at San Fedele Cultural Center and then driving on to Provence, stopping somewhere along the way to eat our last pane di santé, grateful to have savored it one more time and looking forward to all the baguettes to come.