I love this time of year. I love the humidity. I love the heat that makes you think you can’t breathe. The still, quiet moments in the afternoon when even the birds can’t sing, but the cicadas can. I love the moment when the afternoon has been so hot for so long that you think it will never end, and then the tree frogs start singing and you know relief is in sight.
I love the roll of distant thunder and heat lightning. I love it when the Southern sky opens up and indiscriminately dumps millions of gallons of water on the ground, and all you can do is just watch the water run everywhere and over everything. I love the mist sprayed by the rain when it hits the screens of my porch. I love the smell of rain evaporating off of hot asphalt.
I love the taste of a 90 degree cherry tomato and the way it bursts on your tongue. The thick flesh of scuppernongs and muscadines give way easier when eaten next to a ditch on a dirt road in August with bare feet and sunburned legs. Watermelon seeds fly further and no one tests the lake water to see if it’s too cold.
It’s an invitation to be still and not think, because even the squirrels that runs riot in my head can’t muster a decent effort in this kind of heat. It’s the kind of heat that allows you to deeply appreciate the color green. And like the spring, it will be gone all too soon, and we will lament that we didn’t sit and look at it longer.