Old-Fashioned Fruitcake
According to Aristotle, “one swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day” – so what does make a summer? It certainly isn’t anything to do with the calendar.
To me, summer begins with the scent of sunblock in the air, despite the fact that my togs don’t leave much skin to be sunblocked. There are invariably those around me who practically have to bathe in the stuff. Indeed, some people spend more beach time putting on sunblock than actually in the water.
It’s an odd sort of time, January, especially in the Southern Hemisphere where you’ve got the whole summer thing lumped on top of the Christmas/New Year things. It’s like no matter what you think you’re doing, your brain doesn’t really believe you’re seriously trying to do anything until at least February – and not even then, if it’s hot.
It’s been 27 degrees C (80.6F) every day this year. This may not seem hot to you (particularly if you live with air conditioning) but it’s all a matter of what you’re used to, and this climate has conditioned me to mostly dwell in the teens.
Unfortunately, my to do list for summer projects includes things like “clear out woodshed” and “stack cord of firewood” (that’s 3.6 cubic metres/130 cubic feet, by hand), and “dig drainage ditch”.
Due to our proximity to the longest day, the sun pours down for about fifteen hours at a stretch. Fifteen hours and three minutes, if you want to get precise about today. This means that it gets cool enough to go outside and get to work on the garden about ten minutes before it gets dark enough that you can no longer see the garden – about half an hour before bedtime.
