I do not complain about weather, as a rule. Snow, rain, wind — especially wind, which I love. Blizzards. Polar cold most winters. None of it bothers me. I am a cold-weather person, with reasons. You can always add another layer; there is a limit to how many you can take off, and even then.
What I do not handle well is heat.
This week has been a heat wave. Summer is not officially here for another week, and already this. My morning coffee, which is usually the small ritual that starts the day, has stopped being a pleasure — drinking something hot at eight in the morning is no longer agreeable. I drink it over ice now. I change clothes two or three times a day, trying to stay in dry ones. Nanouk, my northern husky mutt, pants in the kitchen and looks at me as though I have done something to her personally. Her evening walks, which we normally take around dinner-prep time, are pushed as late as possible to skip the worst of it, and paid for in bugs. Crisp sheets become sweaty sheets within minutes of getting into them.
Living somewhere with a body of water I could plunge into is a dream I have not yet realized. A lake, a river, a pond, even a serious pool. With water, the heat is the cost of being able to swim. Without water, the heat is just the day.
I love fall. The colors, the light, the smell of the air after the first cool night, the harvests, the wool sweaters coming back out. I am happiest in flannel, in chunky knits, in alpaca and cashmere and merino, in jeans and good boots. Winter is the bright one — snow that creaks underfoot, sun on snow brighter than the sun in July, candles lit in the evening, the year turning inward without dimming. Spring is rebirth, all chartreuse and citrusy greens and the first time anything but the sky has color again. And summer is the growing season. That is what summer is for now, in this stage of my life. The garden is open. The soil is warm. The work outside happens.
Still, summer gives a few things back. The garden, which is its whole point. Homemade iced tea on the terrasse. The local strawberries, in right now — redder than red, sweet the way fruit is supposed to be sweet, smelling of summer before you have picked them up, sending juice down the chin when you bite into them. Nothing like the imported kind, bred to travel thousands of miles and taste of nothing. The tart haskaps are in too. Raspberries are coming, red and black. Mulberries, which I love. Cherries, sweet and tart, both. Blackberries and blueberries by the end of next month. Some heat-wave evenings, when cooking is more than I can face, dinner is a bowl of whatever berries are in.
Saisons means seasons. The brand is built on the idea that each of them holds something specific, and that the practice is meeting whatever they hold, instead of wishing for the one you would have chosen. Summer holds the garden and the berries. And gelati and hummingbirds and thunderstorms and warm wind. Fall will be coming, eventually. I can wait.
— Catherine