Summer arrived without ceremony, and the bougainvillea found itself suddenly bare, leaves fluttering like caught confetti. In a rush, branches were thrown aside, a stubborn thrash of green and crimson to cast a brief shadow over a world that did not pause for introductions. The pruning, long overdue, finally began, because mid-April brought a heat that felt almost impatient. In this climate, a plant with a thousand waters cannot be kept by old proverbs alone. The expected rains for a windyMarch gave way to a May that wore petals like a smile, bright and relentless, and still the forecasts argued with the sun.
Old sayings now seem almost ridiculous, as if time itself has taken a step back to shrug. It is not that the earth is indifferent, but that human urgency has rewritten its rhythm. We have tapped the planet dry with hungry ambition, believing the supply endless and the consequences distant. The truth is simpler and harsher: every action against the natural order exacts a price, and that price is paid in seasons that misbehave and waterways that thin.
So summer has claimed the days, and forecasters—those voices that habitually warn and caution—sound more worn than wise. The season arrives like a stealthy guest, and the closet still holds the last of the cold-weather garb, inert as if surprised by the heat yet unsure what to wear to it. The world seems to pause on the edge of a heat that is not a moment but a long conversation with the sun, a reminder that comfort and danger can share the same horizon.
The author has revisited this topic many times, acknowledging that it is not new. The climate story has echoed through decades, sometimes in a cinema of memory where a handsome lead named Paul Newman sits beside the booming voice of Faulkner’s prose. There have been summers imagined as endings and summers imagined as beginnings, each telling a version of fever and breath, of a landscape that refuses to stay still.
Locally, in a southern neighborhood where life carries its own weather, a priest once asked for rain with the humility of one who carries a church door on a humid day. It seems ages since such a news item last crossed the desk, and yet the memory lingers like a damp towel on a bench of time. One can recall the old German tale, recounted by a storyteller who found a miraculous intervention in a moment of drought, when a military figure from the mid-twentieth century offered a rain that came as if summoned by a quiet, stubborn hope. In the story, a dance under the moon summoned clouds and calmed the thirsty earth, a ritual almost forgotten in modern days, yet not entirely erased from the collective imagination.
Today the absence of such rain is felt more keenly. The Sioux dancer, the rain god, the moon’s slow descent, all echo as distant echoes of a time when humans believed they could coax weather to order. Yet what remains is warmth, a summer that refuses to end, and the bougainvillea that explodes with color while teaching a hard lesson: perhaps there will be no more drops, no last ruinous bloom, only the long, unyielding season and the possibility of a drought that makes every flower a stubborn act of defiance. The plant continues to flourish, its vines heavy with blossoms, while the surrounding earth holds its breath, unsure of what the next rainfall will bring or whether the next wind will be enough to carry the seeds to safety.