Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer are upon us.

The haze is coming up the valley from a fire just over the US border at Nighthawk.

The laze is a direct result of 40C temperatures which effectively put a stop to all activity after noon in the House on the Back Pasture. Everyone sleeps, - Caspar the dog, Callie, the Cat, and Husband and I snooze along with them.

To make up for it we are up long before the sun rises. There are windows and doors to open wide to the comparative coolness of the early hours. And it's the only time to garden seriously.

Evening hours aren't conducive to the same kind of activity, - they are more a wandering, snipping, camera snapping time.

And the craze??? Somehow we manage to avoid that, having passed the age of beaches and wild parties long, long ago.

The days drift by, - we recall picking apricots when the temperature was 117F, and the years when our only air conditioning was a sprinkler on the flat roof of our house. The water falling and swirling outside the windows gave an impression of coolness, and we were young and quite willing to believe that it cooled the house and the shade trees surrounding us.

Now that we are "older" we are happy with the air conditioning that keeps the house at a mean temperature of 72. Spoiled, spoiled, spoiled!

Having finished Rutherfurd's mighty tomes on the Princes and Rebels of Ireland I do a little light reading. My trip to the wool shop resulted in the purchase of some space dyed wool, and in odd moments I knit a few rows, delighting in the constant change of colour. On the loom the warp (oh yes, still the same warp for silk scarves) lies relaxed and indolent.

The music we listen to is light and airy, and I am practising Handel's Water Music to play pianissimo on the organ in church tomorrow.

Heavy is a word that is banished from my vocabulary whilst we are under the weight of the summer sun.

On Tuesday we make another trip to Penticton, and the weatherman, whose word we take with a grain of salt, promises that the weather will be a little cooler.

Here is the Abraham Darby rose in the morning, - a lovely symbol of Summertime.