“The middle of June is past, and it is dry and hazy weather.  We are getting deeper into the mists of earth; we live in a grosser element, further from heaven these days, methinks.  Even the birds sing with less vigor and vivacity.  The season of hope and promise is passed, and already the season of small fruits has arrived.  We are a little saddened because we begin to see the interval between our hopes and their fulfillment.  The prospect of the heavens is taken away by the haze, and we are presented with a few small berries,” writes Henry David Thoreau in Wild Fruits.

The humidity rolled in early this year.  The transition has been less melancholy, in my view, than what Thoreau writes, but it feels true that the anticipation is behind us.  Summer is here and things are slowing down.  I garden less.  But I think on it more, looking for cool windows of time to get in the soil.  How does anyone do hard labor under a hot sun?  I am of cotton-picking stock, and I can’t even.

But there is something luxurious to me about the wetness in the air.  The garden is fecund.  My eyes are rested.  Like the weight of many blankets, I relish the atmospheric hugs.  Hugs imposed on us from the sky.  My desert soul draws near, welcoming moisture, and enjoying the few small berries.