Hitting the wall of summer

[vaneramos]

Friday morning we have frost (I see it on the used cars next door, but it doesn't hit my tomatoes three blocks away) and by Monday the temperature hits a sticky 26°C (79°F). This is Ontario.

My apartment is unbearable. The fan just blasts hot air in my face all day.

I meet John, Mina and Barney for an evening walk with all the summer trimmings. Everyone has gravitated to the Speed River as if sight of water could cool us. We stand in a long line to buy ice cream cones at The Boathouse. Mina raves about the Creamsicle flavour. I get a scoop of banana under a scoop of chocolate. Under settling dusk, white dandelion balls spread like a supercluster of galaxies across the dark grass.

On the way home I stop at the garden, where several others are taking advantage of the cooling twilight, but the mosquitoes are maddening. I just check a few things, pulling up more bindweed shoots. Hurrah for the peas germinating!

Angelica with its needy taproot isn't taking the heat so well. The rain barrel system hasn't been working, so I drive home and bring back a pail of water. En route from the car, the handle breaks and half the water sloshes down the sidewalk. I have enough to irrigate the angelica, but nothing else. A new moon nestles above the sunset city.

Before going home, I go down to the turnaround at the bottom of Kingsmill Avenue and get out of the car to see if toads are singing in Eramosa River Park, but evening is silent. I'm hit with a heady fragrance of linden flowers, but don't know where it comes from. In the sweaty purple sky, several stars twinkle, a planet gazes plainly, and a single small bat flutters.

It hits me why Lewis Carroll wrote, "Twinkle, twinkle little bat."

My bedroom air conditioner, at least, is working, providing a cool haven for sleep. Today is supposed to go up to 30°C (86°F).