A Season of Moments

Summer seems a season of moments and slowness, more than any other.  To fully appreciate the season I need time and peace and quiet, to be fully aware of the passing moment.  Sunlight on the pale underwings of a buzzard, turning high over the Gore woods; a goldfinch feasting on the seedheads of the mountain cornflowers.  Even very small events seem suffused,drenched, with summerness, with summer-light; a pleasant conversation with a new friend in a warm rectory garden, turning a child's spade over and over in my hands, then putting it back in the paddling pool as we moved off, the water cooling as the shadows lengthened and the spade moved into shadow, seemed inescapably summery.