On summer

I grew up in Calgary, where the summers are typically dry and quite short. The first full year I spent in Ontario was my third year of school, working at a once-a-week internship at Paper Bag Records and The Home Depot garden center the rest, pretending I knew anything about the barbecues. (I did not)

Between those summer jobs I would walk the ravines, with the damp-rot of greenery and earth and the buzzing of cicadas and oppressive humidity. I was experiencing 'true summer' for the very first time in 20 years.

Now the dry-straw scent of a western summer makes me nostalgic, but I still prefer a full-humidity summer night, when it's past dark but you can comfortably exist in just a t-shirt and shorts. There's a particular bloom to the street lamps, and the heavy smell of green - grass, leaves, soil.

Remy and Murphy, on the compost bin in the garden