THE FIERY ORANGES AND YELLOWS OF A CITY SUMMER

THE BALTIMORE SUN

Summer has a way of getting away from me. The other day, I went shopping for some summer cotton neckties, maybe madras. (Baltimore bargain-hunter that I am, I thought they might be reduced.) A sales clerk clued me in: I should have done my buying back in May before they all sold out. Another friend warns that summer slips away quickly after July 4; the All Star break is my alarm to make something out of these days.

My first Eastern Shore tomatoes of the summer disappeared on a platter a couple of nights ago. My guests made more over them than the other dishes, which took more effort. After a winter of eating frozen and canned, there is something about fresh-picked. Why is it that the line for the just-shelled green peas snakes around the corners at the neighborhood farmers' market?

Baltimore's July heat is the best friend of the tomato and the garden -- a July garden of blazing color. My roses are on their second bloom, and the summertime perennials are going crazy. I should be cutting from the zinnias grown from seed by Aug. 1.

It helps to like hot oranges and yellows this time of the year in Baltimore. July is the month of the black-eyed Susan. Mine are welcome summer guests that never give me trouble and return year after year. For years, I grew a fancier, more cultivated variety. Then some of their wilder cousins came for a stay in my garden and soon became my favorite backyard visitors. They seem to enjoy a miserable, hot July day.

I also associate July with hot orange, the orange in the common but wonderful day lily and all its cousins. Even the most adverse of city conditions cannot faze these hearty flowers. There is something about the way they grow so casually -- and anywhere, without complaining about conditions.

I also link orange with a hot July sun, the Orioles colors and the syrup on a blood-orange snowball bought at the corner stand. Like the arrival of a Queen Anne's County tomato, there is also something wonderful about the late light we get these nights. The day will not quit without a fight. There's a fabulous lingering twilight that doesn't extinguish until 9 p.m. Sometime about 8:30, the sun drops low in my garden and for another 15 minutes it seems to relight the blooms of an old hydrangea.

All the work of getting a porch together -- the chairs, the stuff hauled up from the cellar (and in my case, the awnings) -- becomes worth the effort.

July also produces one of the best quiet times of the year. Charles Village, which is normally crowded with students, seems to lose population during the summer. The city in general seems to thin down a bit. Maybe people just hunker down in front of air-conditioning units. Maybe they do leave. Can Ocean City hold them all? We locals love to come out and reclaim our neighborhood.

There are nights when normally busy streets almost seem like country lanes, but that doesn't last long. Before you know it, the sirens kick in and there is no mistaking Baltimore for Garrett County.

jacques.kelly@baltsun.com

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