Summer heat and summer blooms

The past few weeks on the left coast have been exceedingly hot, at least by our standards. Temperatures, "near the water" as the forecast always says, approach thirty on most days, sometimes more, and nights, especially in second floor apartments facing west, have been difficult. We complain, and will again when the cold winds and rain come.







The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot.
- Natalie Babbit






When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.
- Georgia O'Keefe

There is nothing you can see that is not a flower. There is nothing you can think that is not the moon.
-Matsuo Basho

Photos by Jim Murray. Copyright 2014.