Wednesday July 21st

Day 91

Four cakes are sitting on cooling racks on the dining room table. One square, two round and a loaf - like parcels of happiness to be unwrapped on Saturday.

All afternoon the kitchen has pumped out rich warm scents of orange and chocolate, almond and lemon, filling the whole house with comfort.

Tonight, opening the back door to shoo out a bee, I am assailed by a perfume - dripping, tropical - that replaces the air. The luminous yellow and white flowers of the honeysuckle, which I hardly notice in the day, are tumbling over the fence, radiating their scent into the dark garden.

A line in Mary Oliver’s poem, Roses, Late Summer, comes to me,

the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness

and are giving it back to the world.

I hope I will remember to keep breathing in this summer - before it’s suddenly over.