Thursday, July 9, 2009

The Very Definition of Summer


If summer could be defined without words, if its very essence could be gathered up enmasse - from a Provencal orchard in August, a Corfu seaside in June ... a bit of a taste of strawberries and cream in St. James Park, or one perfect peach eaten on a screened porch in Georgia - and if that essence could be crystalized into one single all encompassing moment, then this must certainly be it.
For surely, this is the very definition of summer.......

I am wading, chin deep, in a saffron sea, with the drone of honeybees filling the air, a multitude of tiny violinists tuning up for their daily noontime symphony. Beneath a cloudless ocean of sky, I stand at the heart of ten acres of sunflowers, a mere dot of white linen on a canvas of gold. True to their nature, for they are always the friendliest of flowers, they have made me most welcome, nodding and waving as I have passed deeper and deeper into their midst until now they are all that I see. I feel almost one of them, a living, breathing representative of summer.

To choose which ones to take home to my vases is a task more difficult than I had imagined, for each is unique in its beauty and grace and each seems to wish for an adventure, a journey away to places unknown. Feeling richer than Midas, I fill my green bucket with gold and marvel at my bounty. Eventually, I make my way back through the smiling rows, back to where Edward and Apple wait with the Songwriter under the cool damp shade of an oak tree.

And now....
there are vases and vases of butter-yellow faces wherever I choose to look.
My rooms are filled with summer.