My love affair with summer
The hardest part of living in Houston was summer. Not only is the season on the Texas Gulf Coast miserable beyond description, but I’d spent the first part of my life in places were summer was loved not hated. On the summer front, I never fully made the transition to “southerner.”
Prior to buying a house in New Mexico, I enjoyed a few summer hiatuses: two summers in Switzerland and three renting here in the Sandia’s. But it only as a homeowner that I find myself already (four days officially into summer) dreading its end. Most people I know love the change of seasons. I did in Houston: when summer was finally over and we went into that undefined season that constitutes the other eight months of the year (barring the occasional two or three weeks of winter). I’m not sure how I’m going to feel about the changing of the seasons here.
And, northern New Mexico is having a relatively cool summer after a lengthy spring. It’s snowed twice since I arrived in late April, and Saturday and Sunday night it got down in the forties. While my herbs don’t like it at all, the rest of New Mexico’s vegetation is stunning.
Lavender now in bloom 
Late blooming cactus 
View to the west 
Good thing I didn’t pull this ‘weed’ 
Rapeseed in front of the storage shed 
Rapeseed 
An abundance of columbine 
Wildflowers I’ve not seen in previous years 
This is the local garden center, not France
Beautiful!!!
It’s a summer wonderland.
So glad you are writing again! Surely you will want to glory in the brisk fall evenings and rustle of wind in the aspens. We hope to see you in the fall when leaves start to turn!
Absolutely. Last year I saw the aspen turn — both here and in Colorado, so I hit the season twice. It was the first time since about 2000 and only the second time since I left Colorado in 1988. Early October is best here in the Sandia’s and I do hope to see you and Jim then.