Wherein Diane Regrets Talking Smack about the Mistral
When we first landed in Provence, it was windy. I knew about the mistral, the wind that causes entire towns to shut down and people to go mad. So when I was told this baby wind was the famous mistral, I scoffed. Worse, I scoffed on Social Media (@kidsandcastles on Twitter). After all, I grew up in Saskatchewan. That little wind with a clear blue sky was what we prairie folk refer to as “a beautiful day”.
But I shouldn’t have dismissed the mistral that quickly. It got much worse. Here’s our neighbours’ veranda after the last windy day here:
The Mistral Redesigns a Village Veranda
The wind even did some damage to the road signs:
Mistral-Damaged Sign
But the saddest of all, was the fig tree in the backyard. I really don’t like figs as a general rule, but these ones were very good.
Mistral Destroys Yummy Fig Tree
Au revoir yummy fig tree. You will be missed.
Wow! I’m impressed. Sorry about the fig tree. If you were planning to stay there for longer, I would have advised you to plant a new tree. 🙂
The gardener came to cut the tree down and he actually left the stump. He said there was a good chance the tree would grow again. If we come back here 10 years from now maybe there will be good figs again!
After all my years on the prairies the subject of wind and what it can do is academic – I have (or at least had) a picture of how wind drove a ten foot piece of eave troughing through the heart of a gum tree with 4 feet out one side and near 6 feet on the other. Like I say…….
how do you say “bummer” in french?
According to Google Translate, it’s “bummer“. I get a LOT of my laughs these days from Google Translate. We had a comment in French about one of our pictures that had the girls standing inside a huge fireplace. The French included the word “miniature“, which in the context of the entire comment was translated by Google to be “thumbnail”.
Yes. That’s a wind.