One of the nice things about being retired and not having to spend my time in meeting rooms and hotels in faraway cities is that I get to stay at home and watch the seasons change around me.

The character of the city I live in alters with the weather. It’s a city built on hills in a river valley. There are trees on every horizon. The buildings are made of a honey-coloured stone that transforms from drab and sad in the rain to bright and light when the sun shines.

So far this year, we’ve had a lot of drab and sad and almost no bright and light. The non-arrival of summer has felt like a physical weight, making my days drag.

Yesterday, the summer arrived, flourishing sunshine like a magician’s wand and it seemed that all of us breathed more easily. I spent part of the day on the deck at the top of my steeply sloping garden, listening to a book, watching the birds bounce from tree to tree and bees move from blossom to blossom with the enthusiasm of drunks on a pub crawl. The trees on the opposite side of the valley shimmered in the sun. I heard a hot air balloon snorting like an impatient dragon as it inflated in the valley below and then watched it rise above the tree-lined hills into a cloudless sky.

I sat outside until late, reluctant to go in even though the garden cooled as shadows claimed it. Summer’s arrival felt like a promise kept, like the restoration of a faltering pulse, like coming home.

Back inside, I went looking for a poem that captured the uplift of spirits that summer’s arrival had given me. I found ‘Summer’ by Christina Rossetti.