Summer here is not long, brief as fireflies or phosphorescence in a Northwest night. The palette of summer is for me associated with Kodachrome brightness, from hot red pinks and oranges through the harshness of titanium white singed caramel and crisp at the edges, like a marshmallow toasted in a beach fire. It is the ring of blackness touching the white hot ash of a match-tip struck.

The sun is at its peak. Punishing brightness dissolves colour like the flare of an old projector bulb burning film. Everything pales, glare swallows sunflowers, goldfinch and the ripening corn. Bees are loud in the garden. Halo of pollen, golden combs in the hive.

I remember the indolence of holidays, the sense, leaving school, you could be anyone, reinvent yourself. Troubles seemed far away. Road trips beckoned, hood down, listening to the sultry classics: sea, sex and sun sung by Serge Gainsbourg, yellow line stretching forever ahead of you.

Like your life, it wouldn't end. And yet; even as the day gives off the scent of roses petals fall summer gives way to autumn

I think this is what lends Summer its great beauty. We know it will end. Nevertheless, we throw ourselves into it absolutely, heedless as the profusion of flowers, fully and with abandon. Gabryel Harrison