Bright Summer Days

The light is intense here. Every summer. I bathe in it, and seek shelter from it. Mostly I just love it so much. Born and bred in Southern California, sunlight is in my breath and bones. When everything and the land are awash in light, it feels so right.

After a long wet winter, and a brisk spring, summer is a welcome guest.

Sunwash everything. The walls, the floors, the whole house, the countryside. I love squinting in the brightness of it. The timelessness of summer is felt most keenly in the unfading sunlight. When I think about it, I’ve spent so much of my life under that eternal summer sun. Perhaps it’s a unique feature of Southern California, I don’t know. I’ve only ever lived here and nowhere else.

And it’s a dry sun. There’s not a hint of moisture in it. So when you get hot and you wash your hair with the hose in the back garden, you feel a crisp coolness that’s vivifying.

We’re in the back garden frequently these days, designing, planning, and digging. It’s a work in progress to create a tranquil outdoor space – to lounge, to potter, to grow flowers and vegetables. There’s a lot of that to come.

My eyes alight on every sunwashed thing these days. Every color amplified, with hardly a daytime shadow.

‘Till next time.