I can't sleep…
Soft days, with a gentle breeze, create a pause. Just enough to notice how tall grass sways, leaves breathe, clouds swim, and rose petals fall. Here’s to a kind day or night. Here’s to recalibrating in the way that helps you most.
— Carolyn Riker, FB, June 15, 2025
Notes:
I neglected to make plans for the summer. This obviously should have been worked out months ago…All around me people are busy relaxing. Somehow, they arranged to spend their weekends in July at the beach and are away in August…
As for me, I didn’t key into any of the warnings — the lists of must-try ice cream pop-ups and which beach towels to buy. The internet sets up a constant swirl of seasonal prep and appreciation — get ready, get ready, enjoy it, indulge, it’s the last gasp — and then suddenly, it’s gone, and it’s time to review the highs and lows.
Maybe seasonal shape shifting has knocked me off my pegs. Winter is snowless, spring is short, summer seems to have stretched outward, its oppressive heat hovers over the full calendar year like a threat. Now — who knew? — August is here and I haven’t begun to make the most of the season…
I haven’t been to the beach or the pool or the lake. The Weber grill is covered in dead leaves and there’s a wasp nest back there that I’ve been meaning to call someone (who?) to remove. I’ve spent no time on a boat, on an outdoor chaise or nestled in a hammock. I’ve worn neither gingham nor seersucker nor floppy hat. I forgot to obsess over Lyme disease, but it doesn’t matter because I have yet to venture into a summer meadow or grassy field…
I am not summer people, something hard to admit because summer is also the pushiest season, the most insistent that it be reveled in publicly. I’m not sure I have the time or energy required to pursue it, at least not in real life. I marvel at people with second homes when I can barely stay on top of my one, and summer traffic stresses me out…
And what did I miss, really? I got my insides churned to the point of nausea by the summer’s political cycle without going to Six Flags. The Olympics arrived online, no need to sweat it out in oversubscribed Paris. My nonexistent summer was if nothing else cheap…
Is this just regret masquerading as smug superiority and earthy thrift? Perhaps. But I can focus on that in the fall, which is apparently next month, and it is past time to get ready. I’ve seen the Halloween candy on the shelves.
— Pamela Paul, from “It’s Too Late for Summer Now.” (NY Times, August 15, 2024)
Pick the tomato warm from the garden. Sit right there in a sunny patch if you’ve got one. Brush off any dirt and bugs, but don’t make yourself crazy. Sprinkle with a little salt. And don’t you add one other thing, because there’s just something about a tomato being a tomato. Eat it like an apple. Let the juices run down your chin, and then wipe ‘em away with your shirtsleeve. You heard me. The perfect summer tomato is worth half a shirt. And that’s the truth.
― Kat Yeh, “The Truth About Twinkie Pie” (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, January 27, 2015)
Photo: Pixabay via Pixels
Ask her what she craved
and she’d get a little frantic
about things like books, the woods, music.
Plants.
Seasons.
Also freedom.
— Charles Frazier, Nightwoods: A Novel
Notes:
In my newsletter two weeks ago, I confessed my dislike of summer and invited you to send me emails defending the season. Hundreds of you responded, so what follows is a tiny and somewhat random sampling of your terrific contributions, for which I thank you.
Sam Sifton, in the Cooking newsletter, described the compression of time as we age: “Back-to-school advertising has started to show up in my feeds, and it’s depressing. Summers lasted forever when I was a child. Now they hurtle past, express trains bound for shorter days and hard shoes.”
Summer’s meaning and virtues hinge on place, age and more. “Childhood summer is the wilds of the neighborhood but grown-up summer is a hot car,” wrote Scott Williams of Salt Lake City. “Alpine summer is the smell of pine sap but downtown summer is the smell of asphalt. Summer on vacation is a novel but summer at home is a repair manual.”
Summer, many of you noted, is about certain fruits at their ripest, certain flavors at their peak, certain tastes that hide from us or are muted during the other parts of the year. “Only summer gives us blackberries for jelly and cobblers,” wrote Cheryl Roddy of Ooltewah, Tenn. “Only in summer can blueberries and peaches be turned into jams and frozen for winter pies. Only in summer do tomatoes taste like tomatoes and okra and beans grow in my garden, and butter-slathered, fresh-boiled corn makes me shout ‘Hallelujah! Continue reading “Summer is… (and Yours?)”