I remember when Summer came parading over the hill a few months ago, making her annual appearance at our party. She was, as she always is, a sight to behold — radiant and luxurious, wrapped in a lavish riot of color splashed across a jeweled and varied background of green. If we were a more imaginative people, we would have a thousand words for all the greens she wears. Her cap of blue is a blue spilled straight from the brush of a Dutch master.

She always arrives loaded with gifts — baskets of bright nodding blooms, boxes of dripping and delectable fruits and vegetables, to be unpacked methodically, slowly over the course of the party, according to her careful, time-honored timetable.

Her bags are stuffed with sunshine, enough to take us deep into the nights, and she has a full bar packed in her trunk.

She smells sweet and delicious, oozes sensuality and she coaxes us to be our best languid and primitive selves. She plays happy, salty, sultry hot weather tunes for us and encourages our ease and slow living. She pours potential right down our greedy throats and we are renewed.

The glorious sun-drenched months have rolled by now like a slow train to somewhere, anywhere, we don’t care anymore because Summer is here and all is well.

The party has been magnificent, as always. The food — juicy, sun-ripened, char-grilled, icy sweet — has done its job, kept us going, slowed us down. The music has made us loose-limbed, loose-tongued, and in some cases just loose. We’ve worked and played ourselves into lathers of sweat and the rains have come and fixed it all. The sunshine has warmed and baked and sizzled our faces and our little brains until we think the whole of life must be one long party.

But things are changing. It needs to end now, this party with Summer. She’s worse for the wear — her hair in tatters, her colors faded, her fruits and veggies rotting and stinking at the bottom of boxes. She reeks of rum and coconut and is trailing clouds of fruit flies. She’s got no more gifts and she takes the sunshine away earlier each day.

The house is damp and sticky, everyone is a little slow and dull. The frowzy fields buzz with the constant drone of late drunken insects, the heat has melted all our best intentions into pools of procrastination and excuses.

Summer has let herself go, she’s made a mess and now it’s time for her to go. She needs to go back over the hill, take her messy things, recover, regather. She’ll need to wash well, sleep deep and drink lots of water.

It’s been wonderful, it always is. I’ll miss her, I always do, and I’ll pine for her in the midst of another party. She’s still glorious in the right light, this late in the day — look at her. She’s voluptuous and ripe, her colors less bright but somehow noble, somehow weary. She still beams and is full of stories, I’m sure.

Perhaps I should sit with her in the evening on the porch a few more times, perhaps with chilled wine, a sliced ruby tomato on a plate with olives and cheese. We’ll reminisce about this latest party, listen to the late chorus and watch the sun slide toward the still hot wet earth. We’ll toast her faraway and much anticipated return.

And then, I’ll turn my mind to Autumn. I’ve heard there have been sightings on the road, she’s on her way. She’ll be draped in rich, burnished velvets, bringing her own brilliant gifts of gold and red and yellow. Fat apples and ciders, fresh game and soups, her own little bar kit packed in a leather satchel. We will fire up the ovens and bake, she will arouse the creator in all of us and we will roar.

Summer will soon be a memory, her mess tended, her glory glowing quietly in the recesses of our minds.

But Autumn’s party is never to be missed, one of the best of the year.