salt water taffy. i saw it in the store last night and my heart lurched. the box and the little wax paper wrapped candies in their faded summery colors. the memories of going to the shore. i would go as a child, but the real memories are my trips to the shore as a young woman. going with the boy i loved. holding hands on the boardwalk. eating hot greasy chips and cotton candy. ferris wheels and roller coasters. braids and beads in my hair. buying a flowy skirt to wear out to dinner. playing catch in the sand. a biker bar a few blocks off the beach. for an hour in the afternoon. finding music and jewelry and treasures we loved. kisses in the waves under the stars. and boxes of salt water taffy to take back to reality with us. the reality we both feared. and then saying goodbye. to the ocean. to the boy. to youthful freedom. and here i am 20 years later, remembering it all because of a box of candy.

the heat is intense. the cats have looked like this all day. i took a quick trip over the border to the land of my birth this morning to pick up a roll of cotton quilting batting that i'd ordered. and the queen anne's lace waving in the fields and on the edge of the highway made me cry as i drove. it is one of many personal iconic summer-isms, but possibly the one i hold dearest. i will head to my parents in the next few days to get photos of the fields all white and dreamy. i am finding this summer the most beautiful i can remember. and sarah harmer's 'songs for clem' is the soundtrack to all the steamy beauty.

there has been a lull in my little world. tom was away for the weekend, edgar had a hard time managing the hot and humid days, i had quilts to make, and finally hosting a wonderful bbq with friends from work ended the weekend. there was impromptu, fully dressed swimming....the lake can be magnetic like that, you expect to simply wade and get your toes wet but the seduction is too strong and you end up laughing and gasping and diving under the waves. and greta (our golden squirrel) made an appearance or two. i'm beginning work on a series of collages that will make it's home in slovenija. i'm excited about this and thrilled to have time devoted to my paper room.....it's where the passion bubbles the deepest. but thankfully it's not a chore to make quilts either.
today we'll have a little drive, i'm sure, and we'll go for a lovely dinner downtown, for it's tom's birthday and a little celebrating is in order. i hate to say goodbye to june, but july is certainly a great consolation prize....it rarely disappoints.

we have just returned from a magnificent few days on the lake. the weather wasn't sunny the whole time, but it was wonderful nevertheless. edgar waded into the lake up to his chest whenever he wanted a drink. we swam. we went out in the boat. we had our friends come for sunday afternoon. we read for as long as we liked and woke with the loons. and we learned once more how fortunate we are to live in our lovely village with our wonderful neighbors.
i've spoken of my garden before. it's a wild little shrine of herbs that fills my front yard deliciously. and when i'm terribly busy in the studio as i've been this spring, it grows into a flurry of lemon and lime balm and queen anne's lace and hollyhock and sweet peas and hydrangea with all the blank spots filled in with grasses and what some might call weeds....tall and full and rather like a meadow. and there is also the woman who lives across the street (i won't grace her with the title of 'neighbor'). she is of the very awkward suburban persuasion, that believes one clipped and trimmed aesthetic should govern all. she has made several unsuccessful attempts to bring the city into my garden. however, this weekend, after we had left for our mini holiday, a bylaw infraction was slapped on both our house and the studio property, stating that the grass was too long and the trimming and weeding had to be completed by monday or a fine and fees would be applied. our neighbors not only took the notices off our doors and let us know what was happening, but went to work trimming and cutting and weeding and completely eliminating any legal issues that the city could possibly cite us with, while maintaining the free and fresh and meadow-like garden that i love so much. so that we could enjoy the vacation we'd planned at the lake. my eyes well up when i think of how they stood up for us, working together so we could have our vacation uninterrupted. they came to the cottage on sunday and we had a perfect afternoon together. and we were reminded yet again how fortunate we are to live in our little village with our amazing neighbors that we love so much. and we're happy to be home. i even got a few hours in the studio this evening. and as i was coming home through the back yard, the entire yard was alive with lightning bugs. there must have been 25 of them. they flew all around me, lighting up right by my cheek. i just sat on the porch and watched. and breathed and smiled.

my grandmother was almost 98 when she died. and there is a flowering bush that grows at the back of our yard, that always makes me think of the last summer that she was alive. and one particular day is strong with memories of my last real day with my grandmother. just the two of us having the sort of breezy and ephemeral moments we did best. i lived with her all my life practically. i was 7 when she moved to canada to live with us. there was no mystery between us. she was always tiny, but in the last few years of her life, she was practically fetal. she weighed between 50 and 60 pounds and osteoporosis had bent her in half. my parents brought her to spend the afternoon with me that day. she sat in her wheelchair on the porch. i wheeled her out in the garden under the trees with flowers and birds surrounding her. i covered her hat with peonies and she laughed and just enjoyed the perfection of a summer day. she spent hours going through the bunches of flowers i brought her, picking out all the blossoms that were past their prime. we watched the cats play in the sun. gala romped around the yard and delighted her. we just spend the afternoon together. and after a lifetime with her, this is one of my strongest and sweetest and dearest memories of us alone together. just an afternoon enjoying each other.

it appears that summer has found us. the heat of the sun and the happy relief of shade. and scattered around our yard are cats. edgar oversees from the porch, but it's the lounging of the cats that gives laziness to the day. i sewed on the studio porch all afternoon watching their slow sleepy summer ways. and then we ended the day playing horseshoes and welcoming my parents home from their two month sojourn south.

mountains of spirea, spilling into the yard. the tiny white confetti petals that have haunted me my entire adult life. the first house i lived in away from my parents. not a dorm room or an apartment. but a house. a beautiful 1920s wood frame house in michigan. we called it the 'white house'. i lived on the main floor and lisa lived upstairs with the sloped ceilings. with our dogs and the boys we loved. the house had a rotting front porch that tilted forward, and sheltering it from the road were huge spirea bushes. in june when they flowered it was like the house was floating on a cloud of white flowers. the white flowers and the sickly sweet scent became my early summer drug. i lived there almost 4 years. when i moved back to canada, i planted a bush at my parents. but before that plant would grow into a bush, i'd moved on again. and then 12 years ago, we moved into our little house by the lake, and as it should be, we have a yard full of spirea.

the light yesterday was so very lovely. it was warm and bounced through the trees, picking up the glowy new green of the just opening leaves. i had laundry on the line all day...5 loads dried before 4 in the afternoon. it was just that sort of sunny breezy perfect day. i often judge summer days by their laundry drying potential. i spent an hour in the front garden pulling up dead growth from last year. surrounded by the lime balm that always seems to grow quite out of control, making the air and my hands and the compost bag smell better than a bakery. crabby watched me from her spot curled up in the clay chiminea we used for our wedding and is now at home in the front garden. and the eave of the front porch has once again been claimed by a nesting robin. at one point after i'd been barefoot in the grass with my camera for an hour following stella and edgar and floyd around the garden, talking to passing neighbors and breathing in the perfection of it all, i came in to tell tom this was my favorite day of the year so far. i think i'll head out now with edgar and my camera to get started on this new day. it looks like another beauty.

for the first time this year, the feeling of summer is layered beautifully into the evening. we spent much of the day in the yard. we raked and cut grass and swept the porch and bagged up all the leaves and the trash that winter had blown into the yard. tom trimmed the trees and the lilac bushes. laundry dried on the line. a long and wonderful list of summer chores. after a lovely dinner out with tom's parents, we arrived home in time to put out the garbage and walk edgar and vaccuum. all with the sun. so when i started feeling the weariness of the end of the day, ready to watch sunday evening hbo shows with tom and edgar and the sky was still gray with a weak sun, i realized this was our first full summer-like day of the year. being at the end of the day and the sky is still light is one of those little summer joys.

i want the green to race it's way towards me. i want the scent of spring. i want the fresh spicy smell of wet earth and fresh green light. i want my heart to race with it's sharp dream of summer. i want the blur of it. i want the slam of screen doors. i want the tickle of cut grass in my throat. i want the jungle of my front garden, spicy with lavender. i want open windows and leaves shivering on the trees. i want the scent of the lake drifting through the yard mixing with barbecue and sunscreen. i want the sound of my husband's guitar drifting from the porch. i want the squeak of the porchswing and the squeal of children. i want to wander without shoes for weeks. i want the snap of sheets on the line and the smell of sun cooked into cotton. and mostly i want the heat of the sun and the cool of the lake as i sift through pebbles at our little piece of beach bringing home buckets of the smooth and mysterious beach glass.

throughout the wintry months, i usually bask in the cozy cave of our house. i read by the fireplace, watch movies, drink tea, cut paper, make collage, and as always, build quilts. the more winter rages outside, the more content i feel. and although our mild winter has been anything but raging, i've come to a point this year where i need to feel some sun. warmth on my skin. grass between my toes. it's been at least a couple of months since i was barefoot in the yard and i'm beginning to dream about summer. i found this photo of our living room window looking into the yard and it stops my heart a little.....the open window. the smells of grass freshly cut and the trees flowering. the breeze off the lake with the lake scents. and the sounds.....the birds, the cats, the squirrels, the children, the boats and cars.....all of it wanders in the window with the breeze. i often notice the scents and sounds more when they drift in the window than when i'm outside in the midst of it all. maybe because the house is quieter and darker than the outside. i'm eager to breathe warm air again and to be awake with the sun at 6 am feeling fresh and ready for the day. just a few more months.....

for the past several summers i've been saving all the chipped and jagged little eggs we find cushioned in the grass. it's always such a dreamy little thrill to find one, that i began taking them home, cradled in my hand and collecting them in a lovely little robin's egg blue tea cup and saucer. they are so delicate and always seem warm to touch and steeped with the scents of summer. in january it makes summer seem real again to look into a cup of baby bird eggs.

photo courtesy of theresa bodi yaroshevich

the raspberries are finished now. but it was only a few weeks ago that they sat sun warmed and ripe in their prickly little maze. my fingers cracked and stained with the juice. scratches on my arms. the warm explosion of sweet in my mouth. my lips stained a little deeper red. and it was only a few weeks ago. now the stores have little plastic boxes of berries. but no allure. they still have a small taste of summer, not like the berries we find in winter that taste of dust and refrigerators. but raspberries that have been gathered in an afternoon, that there are war wounds from the gathering, are still the perfect temperature and sweetness and juiciness. and the moment can sit in me for months, years even. the sun on my neck, the brambles scratching bare legs, and the taste of one single berry is the essence of an afternoon well spent.