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Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Thirty Days of Photographs: Summer

Summer in Finland is like a short but intense love affair. We make everything we can of it, because we know another long and cold winter is waiting just around the corner. This summer has been hot. Very hot, by Finnish standards. We’ve gone to bed sweaty, woke up sweaty, gone to work sweaty. My skin has felt constantly sticky, my coloring deepened by the sun.

Summer in Finland is making the most of what’s given to us. Eating typical summer foods, swimming in the sea, lying in the sun, even when it’s too hot to really enjoy. It’s endless summer nights, spent watching the sunset, then the sunrise a couple hours later. It’s bare legs and mosquito bites. Picking wild strawberries and threading them onto a strand of wild grass, like a string of rubies. Eating them, one by one, savoring the taste. It’s blueberries, raspberries and strawberries, eaten with milk and sugar. Barbeques with friends, a sauna by the lake. Summer in Finland is all these things, and more.

It’s stupid socialist 5-week vacations, 20 hours of light a day. It’s thunderstorms, rain and hail. It’s camping and road trips and days on the beach. It’s ice cream and rowboats and sea gulls and hedgehogs. It’s silly romance novels and laundry drying in the sun outside. It’s drinks with ice, live music and dance. It’s love and romance and time with your family. And it's hardly any snow.

The last weeks in July, newspapers in Finland announced that we were experiencing the hottest summer in 23 years. But a couple of days ago, when July turned to August, autumn came knocking. As if someone had flicked a switch, the warm summer mornings that left you longing for a cold drink turned cool. Suddenly, I found myself wanting to go back in to get a sweater. The days are still warm, summery, even, but the nights are quietly telling you that fall will soon color the leaves red. Red like the wild strawberries on that blade of grass.

I’m looking forward to fall. To the beautiful colors and the crisp air. I love fall mornings when you can taste the cold on the air. I love fall nights when the wind is howling and the rain keeps everyone inside. I love leaving work to an already dark afternoon, and lighting candles at home.

We still have a little summer left, though, and in Finland, we enjoy every last moment of warmth and light. We drink it in, so that when the winter is at its coldest, we can already tell by the lightening skies that summer will soon be here again.

This picture is from the home M grew up in, where the gooseberries are ripe, and the sun still warms the grass under your feet. But you can tell it’ll soon be over.

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16 comments:

  1. Summer in Finland sounds lovely, socialist attitudes notwithstanding. Those berries are gorgeous and begging to be picked...were there any left after you took the picture?

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  2. You know when we clicked over to August it meant the year's half over. Moreover, summer's half over. Where did the time go? I like your pic...how the centre gooseberry is in focus against the others that aren't. Say, when you talked about what constitutes summer you forgot beer! Beer is summer. And it's autumn. And it's winter. And...

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  3. I'm bringing whipped cream.  We shall feast on berries.

    Please take our heat away.  We are living in oven.  Yes, Texas is hot, but 109F in the middle of a heat wave that just won't quit is crazy.

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  4. Yikes, 109F sounds Hellish. Literally, I'm pretty sure Hell burns at a constant temperature of 109F. Are you sure you're in Texas?

    Yum, whipped cream! Very decadent. Bring Evil Twin, we'll make a party out of it.

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  5. Centre? What, I suppose you also say theatre? You say tomato and I say tomato.

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  6. Could you be a little more depressing? The year's half over, the summer's half over. Soon you're going to tell me the glass is half empty.

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  7. You're Finnish. So I assume that when you say your coloring's been deepened by the sun it means we can see you now.

    Pretty picture, and nice job of getting the sunlight to shine on the one berry that's in focus. :)

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  8. Nope. Not a single one. Don't tell M's mom, though, I told her it was the birds.

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  9. Exactly, the translucent tan lines look great against my white skin.

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  10. We have short summers too (maybe not as short at Finland's) and they always remind me of Ray Bradbury's All Summer In A Day:

    http://www.dodea.edu/instruction/curriculum/lars/ela_lab/PreK-Grade6/Docs/AllSummerinaDay.doc

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  11. Even though there's no snow on it, it looks like something you'd see on a Christmas card.

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  12. Gorgeous photo, but even more gorgeous post!  I love this one, Ziva!

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  13. Really? Christmas in Madge-ville must be a very strange thing.

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  14. How terribly depressing. I do love rain, but seven years of it? Even I would appreciate the sun.

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  15. There are definitely a few morals hiding in that story. One of those morals being: living on Mars sucks.

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