You probably know this skwushy Christmas song, "It's the most wonderful time, of the year" which appears like a recurring fungus every December. But for me, the winter is the LEAST wonderful time of the year. It's right now that I rejoice: high summer, the heart of July. Unlike almost everyone, I love hot, humid, steamy weather. I love the way the soft air filters out color so that the distant trees shimmer in gray-green and shadows of blue. I love the hot white sky, tinged with gold as afternoon deepens. Most of all I love the oncoming dark clouds in the west, which fill me with joyous anticipation of the thunderstorm and the downpour. There was one today, in the late afternoon, though the thunder was muted rather than the crack and boom of a true July tempest. But the deluge was satisfying.

After the rains come the mists, steaming off the hot pavements and the soaked lawns, and the leaves turn silver as they twist in the receding wind. I keep hoping for another wave of storms. Evening brings more exquisite watercolors, blue-green trees and black silhouettes against a greyed lavender sky. As night falls, the chorus of insects awakens; like me, the insects do their best work all night long. These are not the harsh roaring horde of the seventeen-year cicadas which filled those same trees this May; the singing chorus of crickets are like a drone of tiny whirring bells, while the katydids shake their maracas. Every so often there is a chatter or a zip from some other insect noisemaker. Where I grew up, the hot nights were full of rhythmic chanting from the snowy tree crickets, who chirped faster when it was hotter, slower when it was cooler. Where I live now, there are no snowy tree crickets, but there are all these other little singers to fill the warm nights with friendly song. And this wonderful time is lit by the semaphores of fireflies, silently blinking their mating messages through the moist air.

I look forward to weather which annoys other people. It has to be well over 90 degrees before I get uncomfortable. The dewpoint is my friend. When it's high, I'm happy. I like to stick to tables and papers. I don't mind mosquitoes or flies; I'm usually faster than they are. Bugs come in through holes in the screen and crawl over my art on the table. I just whisk them away with my drafting brush.

Summer is the only time of year when I don't feel as though I am fighting for survival in my environment. I welcome a time when I don't have to wear three layers of clothing even indoors (at work). The days are still long and languid, even in the city, which is unusually deserted on weekends when many folk quit town for the mountains or the beach. I'm not going anywhere. I'm doing logarithms while the air conditioner sighs. Summer is so short, it's moving fast, and soon the dark dread season will loom again. I cherish every sticky moment of this enchanted July.

Posted at 3:30 am | link