Waiting for Summer

Summer has reverted back to its old patterns after trying on some unusual heat last year. With a sigh, it has settled onto the sofa and is taking a nap until fall. Then, I'm hoping, it will awaken and dash around raising the heat and ripening the fruit in the trees. We are cold here because everywhere else is hot. It just works that way. The big deep cold Pacific is being asked to provide cool air after the warm air inland - hot air actually - rises into the heavens, creating a vacuum that the cold air tries to fill. The provision of coolness comes in the form of fog for us, cold, formless, persistent. There has been enough fog lately that cars are beaded with moisture in the morning. They look as if someone had turned the hose on them all night. The rooftops are wet and water pings in the downspouts every morning.

I feel so hopeful every day, looking for sun, wishing for warmth, remembering a suntan. Vine-ripened tomatoes are the stuff of wistful conversations among gardeners around here. "I wish I could just grow tomatoes," my friend said today at breakfast. "My roses look so bad." She pantomimed a withered and sickly being, weakened by pests and mold. "You should just forget about roses in Pacific Grove."

My roses are trying hard, but every bug and ailment known to science is now afflicting them. All for the lack of good warm sun.

Well, on the positive side, we do have plenty of calm here. And gray. Also, we have an abundance of guano, but that's only really a benefit for, well, I'm not sure, but there must be a benefit. So, there you go. A calm, gray, bird-shit-laden town that remembers it once grew tomatoes somewhere else.