Long Days, the Delta Breeze & a Garden Full of Bees
The summer solstice is this weekend - the longest day of the year - and there is no better time to talk about my favorite season. This is the time of year when my inner child comes out to play. I get out of bed easier and earlier, I have more energy, and I feel more relaxed. The fact that I'm not teaching summer school certainly helps, but no matter what, summer has always been my favorite season.
Some people, citing our triple digit heat here in California's Central Valley, will say they don't like it because it's too hot. I really don't mind. I just get up earlier to walk before the heat sets in, take full advantage of air conditioning to get work done in the afternoon, and enjoy Sacramento's delta breeze when we get it. I'm also spoiled with a pool for a quick cool down, but I loved summer long before I lived in a house with one.
Summer is when the days stretch out luxuriously, the light lasting so long it feels like a gift. There is nothing quite like a summer evening outside: dinner on the patio, a cool drink, an old friend, nowhere else to be.
It's also the season of trips and visits, new places and old favorites. Summer family vacations are evolving now, less about packing everyone into a car and more about time with my adult children, who I never get to see enough of, and the particular joy of seeing the world through the eyes of my two-year-old granddaughter. Last summer she was learning the colors of flowers. This year she's learning their names, discovering what berries look like on a vine, and finding out that carpenter bees may buzz loudly past her head but really just want the flowers, so there's nothing to be afraid of.
A Pacific Velvet Ant found scurrying along the creek trail.
Walks stretch for hours this time of year, and the long light means more creatures to see. Along the creek trails, Ginty can cool off in the water and I can dip my feet in alongside her. The pipevine swallowtails have passed the flush of their first generation for the year, but I keep seeing our beautiful Pacific velvet ants and there are little lizards everywhere, tiny birds eating seeds, adolescent turkeys making their ungainly way through the brush, and a few gopher snakes lately that have delighted me. I will admit, however, that a skunk appearing in my backyard well before sunset recently was not on my wish list, though it did provide an excellent adrenaline rush and Ginty came inside like the smart dog she is.
California blue sage, up close and personal.
In the garden, there is never quite enough time to keep up with all the weeding and pruning and tending that summer growth demands. But working in the garden is a joy, and I love seeing what nature and I have managed to create together. My favorite native plant, the blue sage (Salvia clevelandii) has exploded this season to the point where I have to trim it back, which means I get to bring its incredibly fragrant flowers inside. The whole corner of the garden is heady with rosemary, lavender, golden yarrow, and sage, and the carpenter bees and hummingbirds buzz around me as I work. It is genuinely one of my happiest places on earth.
New works in progress in the studio.
In the studio there is a different kind of energy in summer, a calm inspiration, a sense of flow, a feeling that I can just relax and play. The long summers of my childhood seem to have created a rhythm that has never left me, student or not. Right now I'm working on some house-shaped shadow boxes and playing with dollhouse structures as well. The little girl who dreamed of magical tiny worlds is alive and well.
The creatures I encounter on the trail and in the garden plant images in my mind that will eventually find their way into artwork, little frozen moments of summer that I can hold onto throughout the rest of the year, when the days are shorter and the light comes later. Summer doesn't last, but in my studio, it can.
