With Provence summertime comes its endless drought. The heat hits white limestone facades as if you were in an oven, reflecting the light with such intensity. And people organize their lives around this heat: you seek water, you close your house in the hope of retaining some of that nigh time coolness, you chase the shade of wide foliage. There was a fig tree outside the hall of our first house in Provence. As a child, this tree was our shelter: we would climb in its branches and stuff ourselves with its ripe fruits.