The Better Half of Summer

---

I keep looking at the raspberries outside like they personally have something to say to me.

They are getting darker and softer on the vines, some of them already past the point where I would actually want to eat them, and every time I see them I get this tiny little pang of guilt. Not because I have some deep emotional responsibility to a raspberry bush, obviously. That would be a new one even for me.

It is more that they feel like proof that summer kept happening while I was busy doing... whatever the hell I was doing.

There is a sunflower out there too. Or, technically, there is the beginning of what was supposed to become a sunflower. It is currently fighting for its life underneath a small civilization of weeds that apparently had much stronger summer goals than I did.

---

I mean, the patio furniture has spiderwebs on it.

Which feels rude.

Because I remember putting that furniture out.

I remember the beginning-of-summer version of me looking at the backyard and thinking about all the things we could do with it. Sitting outside at night. Having drinks on the patio. Maybe decorating a little. Maybe fixing up the garden. Maybe growing things. Maybe making the whole space feel like somewhere we actually spent time instead of somewhere we occasionally looked at through the window while walking past it.

And now somehow I am standing here in late August watching nature begin its little seasonal closing shift.

Excuse me?

I don't remember approving that.

There is something about the second half of summer that makes me weirdly aware of everything I didn't do during the first half.

June feels full of possibility. July still has that same energy, just slightly sweatier. You can decide you are going to start a garden in June and nobody questions you. You can buy patio lights. You can start building something outside. You can suddenly decide you are a person who grows herbs now.

By late August, walking into the garden centre feels like showing up to a party while somebody is already stacking the chairs.

Everybody else seems to be harvesting tomatoes and posting their homegrown cucumbers while I am staring at my sunflower like, buddy, I am so sorry about the conditions you were brought into.

And I know logically that summer is not actually over.

We still have warm days ahead. Saskatchewan does this fun little thing where it can be 30 degrees one day and then suddenly you are looking for a hoodie because the sun went down. September can still be beautiful. Sometimes October even tries to participate before winter comes crashing through the door.

But culturally? Summer starts packing its bags early.

Back-to-school displays appear. Pumpkin everything starts creeping into stores. People start talking about fall outfits while I am still wearing shorts. TikTok begins shifting from summer morning routines and garden updates into cozy fall resets, and suddenly my algorithm is gently suggesting that I buy a cinnamon candle and reorganize my entire house.

Girl, I haven't even finished summer.

I think that is what has been bothering me.

It isn't really about the raspberries.

It is about this feeling that I missed the window.

There is this imaginary version of summer that lives in my head where June begins and I immediately become extremely productive but also somehow relaxed. I start outdoor projects. I grow vegetables. I spend evenings outside. We go on little adventures. I take photos. I make memories. I use the patio furniture often enough that spiders do not successfully claim squatters' rights.

And then real summer arrives and, shockingly, I am still the exact same person I was in May.

I still have work.

I still get tired.

Some days are too hot to do anything except complain about how hot it is. Some weekends disappear into errands. Sometimes we actually do something fun and then need another day to recover from the thing we did for fun, which feels incredibly mid-thirties but here we are.

And summer just keeps moving.

That part gets me every year.

We treat seasons like they are these huge stretches of time, but they are really a collection of random Tuesdays.

You think, "I'll do that this summer," which sounds enormous. Plenty of time. Endless daylight. Three whole months.

But then those months become work shifts and grocery trips and laundry and scrolling on the couch at 11 p.m. and saying, "We should do something this weekend," before suddenly realizing there are only a few weekends left.

I don't think the summer was actually wasted.

That is probably the part I keep having to remind myself.

We did things.

We went places. We had little days that mattered. There are pictures on my phone proving I wasn't locked inside a basement from June until now. There were sunsets and drives and meals and stupid little moments I will probably remember more clearly than whatever hypothetical backyard project I think I was supposed to complete.

But I can know that and still feel disappointed.

I can have had a good summer and still wish I had used more of it.

Those things can exist together.

I think sometimes I get so determined to prove that I am grateful for my life that I accidentally act like disappointment means I am ungrateful. Like admitting, "I wish I had done more," somehow cancels out everything I did do.

It doesn't.

Maybe I wanted more summer.

That's allowed.

What I don't know is what you are supposed to do once you realize this while there is still technically summer left.

Because starting a giant garden project now feels slightly unhinged. Most people are pulling things out of their gardens, not enthusiastically introducing new plants to the ecosystem.

So what is a late-summer project?

Maybe that is the question I have been stuck on.

What do you start when you are too late for the beginning but not actually at the end?

I think maybe you start smaller.

You pick the raspberries that are still good.

You pull enough weeds away from the sunflower that the poor thing gets a fighting chance.

You wipe the spiderwebs off the patio chairs and sit outside tonight instead of turning the whole backyard into another project that needs to be completed before you are allowed to enjoy it.

Maybe you stop treating the rest of the season like leftovers.

There are still evenings.

There are still warm afternoons.

There are still random little things we haven't done yet simply because we haven't thought of them.

And maybe September doesn't need to immediately become a funeral for summer just because somebody at Winners put decorative pumpkins on a shelf.

I think that is what I needed to figure out.

I am not actually mourning a wasted summer.

I am mourning the version of it I thought I was going to have.

And that's a little different.

That version had a perfect garden and a clean patio and probably somehow remembered to water everything consistently. She sounds lovely. Slightly suspicious, but lovely.

---

The real version has overripe raspberries.

A struggling sunflower.

Spiderwebs on the chairs.

And still, somehow, a little bit of summer left.

Maybe I don't need to save the season.

Maybe I just need to go outside before it's gone.

---

Maybe the rest of summer doesn't need a plan. Maybe it just needs me to actually be there for it.

Talk Soon, Kas 🛋🌿