Most of July has been over or near 100 degrees. The foothills are tinder-dry, it’s hot at all but the highest elevations, and the yard is looking pretty crispy. I’m thoroughly tired of the AC running non-stop and the fight to keep things from burning up, but this week I noticed it’s getting dark closer to 9:00 now instead of 9:30 and felt that same old pang: The tide of summer is headed out.
I started to do the math in my head–a week and a half until August, then only another month of steady weather and six weeks of longer light–and thought of this quote I found a few years ago:
Pelle had already begun to dread the awful day when they would all have to go back to town. He had an old comb with as many teeth as the summer had days. Every morning he broke off a tooth and noticed anxiously how the comb grew thinner and thinner.
Melker saw the comb one morning and threw it away. To worry about the future was the wrong attitude toward life, he said. One should enjoy each day as it came. On a sunny morning like the present one, life was nothing but happiness. How wonderful it was to go straight out into the garden in pajamas, feeling the dew-wet grass under one’s feet, and then take a dip from the jetty and afterward sit down at the painted garden table to read a book or the paper while drinking delicious coffee.
Astrid Lindgren, Seacrow Island