Detail Diary, Vol #18

July flowers and July sky

June 30 - July 23, 2024

Dear friend,

July in Grenoble has been surprisingly forgiving this year. Whenever the heat began to crawl up our necks, rain arrived within a few days to usher it back to the wings. This also sometimes interfered with weekend hiking plans, but I’ll take that over gradual suffocation. (To be fair, I can’t speak for all of July—let alone August—which is finishing in Grenoble without me. I’m now visiting home in Utah/Idaho for a few weeks of dry heat and air conditioning.)

The other thing about July that somehow catches me by surprise every year is the revolving cast of vibrant garden blooms. Plenty of flowers wait until the peak of summer to show up, and in some ways are more interesting than the spring celebrities. Mimosa trees unfurl hot pink tassels like fiber optic lamps, morning glories and hibiscus open luxurious trumpets, hydrangeas saturate litmus-test pink, thistles bristle, roses thrive, pomegranates, passionflowers, bougainvillea, rhododendrons...Bees are still very busy. There are also ripening fruits, some of them astounding—like the peonies that escaped deadheading (see entry #264). On the riverbanks, asters and thistles have gone to exuberant fluff.

Then there’s the sky. In July there are crystalline cirrus days, hazy days, tender days, cumulonimbus days. Just a few of them captured here.

Swifts were still in that sky when I left; they’ll be long gone when I return.

A note for your inbox: since I’m on vacation for the next month, you may get a few extra posts as I catch up on summer exploits—either that or none at all. We’ll see what the vibe turns out to be!

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