high summer

Since I'm sick with a cold, let's just look at some pretty pretty pictures I've been snapping on walks in the park lately, shall we? It's strange to think that the hottest part of the summer is still ahead of us; we had a couple weeks of hot weather sprinkled throughout the springtime and now that we've returned to a normal northwest summer (lingering clouds, a marine layer), it feels like ... okay, that was it! Time for apples and pumpkins!

And then the rugosa hedges are already setting their hips and the rowans are covered in brilliant orange berries and even the haws are coming on (but they're still very green). Which is all a bit disorienting ... are you sure it isn't autumn?  

Summers are still a strange time for me. It's only been a couple years that I've been working them, and despite the length of the days, the season does slip so rapidly through your fingers when you only have the weekends (and as exhausting as it is to learn a new job, I really only have the weekends - I am positively crashing when I come home at night).

See? Apples. Some of the apple trees on campus (somehow I never noticed before that there are apple trees on campus - how did I never notice?) are dropping their apples all over the place already. (Oh. Maybe that's why I never noticed; the apples were gone by the time the school year started.) Walking back to work after a yoga-lunch-break this week, I caught the rich, spicy tang of the decaying fruit, a scent that seemed out of step with the hot, summery sunny afternoon weather.

But I'll be sad when the spiraea fades and the fireweed has bloomed all the way up to the tip of its stalk again. These wild flushes of pink are my favorite signs of summer. Okay, autumn can wait. Let's bask a little longer in this glow.