End of summer...not really

For the 17 years I lived in Toronto, with its long long long grey grey grey cold cold winters, I lived for the brief summer, hot and muggy though it was. And brief it was. Two+ months at the very most. By the end of August, often the middle, a day would come when the color of the sky would change just a little and the first whiff of Arctic air would make its way down toward Lake Ontario. I woke up one August 15, Feast of the Assumption, to find all the leaves in the backyard turned to red overnight. My heart used to sink.

So when I found myself in San Diego in February 1988, fresh from a Canadian snowdrift, and the world was full of color, warm, with vegetation everywhere and people not dressed to stay alive in the cold...I fell in love with California. By 1991 I had moved here.

San Francisco is not San Diego. But the climate here is so so so temperate and friendly. It is the end of August, but the fact is that September is our nicest month. And then Fall will come, and then...what passes for winter, really a kind of robust autumn. In winter it will rain a lot and be damp and the constant vegetation will get even greener and more lush. It will be chilly sometimes...but it will not snow and it will not freeze. So I am not afraid of the end of summer.

This morning this sun is pouring into my Tuscan yellow kitchen and sideways thru the living room window. The door and windows are open and it's probably just under 60 degrees. My heart is not in great shape, nor is my bank account, but it's nice. Very nice. I only I had my car...

Backyard seen from my kitchen door