Diary of My Country Life-June 26th, 2026

The original source of this blog: https://www.lotusandmichael.com/blogs/diary-of-my-country-life

06/26/2026 Friday 67-83F Cloudy

The high temperature throughout next week will be in the 90s F, some days even near 100F. Summer is reaching its peak.

To me, the best thing to do in summer is go to a beach town, spend a few days there at leisure, basking on the beach, reading, daydreaming, and drive around searching for interesting local seafood—they are exactly what we did in the Outer Banks.

In early June we took a road trip to OBX (as the Outer Banks of NC is known), which was our third time to go there. We liked to go at the beginning of the vacation season, before everywhere gets overcrowded and before the vegetables grow into the stage in which they need to be watered every day.

I am not a beach fan. But going to beach in summer seems to be inevitable worldwide. Perhaps it’s the secret call from our DNA: Go to the ocean; go get sea breeze; go explore the vast, external unknown world which has been setting in our dreams the first day we were born.

Ancient Chinese concluded the world into five elements: Gold (or Metal), Wood, Water, Fire, Earth. Everything, and everyone could be classified as one of the five. Based on my birth date and time, my father told me that my element was water, more precisely, ocean water. And my zodiac is Cancer, the crab. And my name is Lotus, a flower growing in water. Because of these mysterious connections, I am eager to go to see the ocean upon the arrival of summer, and only summer.

I have seen oceans in Dalian, Shanghai, Xiamen, Sanya, Long Island, Brooklyn, Myrtle Beach, and OBX. The ocean view in each place was different: The seaside I went to in Dalian was piled with rocks; the coast near my sister’s house in a suburb of Shanghai was behind farmland covered with tall crops; I was fascinated by coconut trees’ slender silhouettes when I first saw them in person in Sanya last June; American flags were still flying in my memory of Long Island Jones Beach on Independence Day of 2016; and I learnt the beauty of cactus in Myrtle Beach; about the OBX, I loved to see tall green grasses sparsely sticking out of the sand dunes… It’s not only about the ocean, or the beach, but also about the climate, the plants, and the vibe given by the people.

I like summer (as much as I like all the other three seasons 😂); summer is meant for ocean. But, other than summer and ocean, another equally attractive scenery to me is mountains in autumn.

When I think of this, I can’t help closing my eyes and seeing those colors: hues of yellow, gold, brown, green, blue, white, red, orange, instantly pop into my mind. Autumn is Nature’s most splendid binge about colors. Perhaps because the plants know that they are either at the end of their life span, or going into lifeless dormancy, they generously pour all their energies into the last fire of their lives. The sky seems to be clearer and more expansive; the water becomes deeper and calmer. Therefore, the space between the sky and water all yield to the plants: Trees, meadows, woods, and forests, letting them have their most magnificent show. Once before we drove along an endless single laned mountain narrow road alone, seeing nothing but a golden sea of trees around us, hearing nothing but the rustles of wind passing the fallen leaves; in late evenings, the chilly mountain rain knocked on the windows, the remaining fire in the fireplace dimmed, and several deer silently feasted on the fallen fruits from wild trees… 

So, every autumn I am eager to go to the mountains, watching the wind gradually dye the colors of foliage, and breathing the crispy cooling air. In deep mountains, I rarely could meet people; my neighbors were deer, birds, squirrels, ducks, and other critters.

We plan to go to Fontainebleau France this October when the forests there start to change colors. Though it’s not located in a typical mountain area, the sweeping forests, the rocky, mini-mountain environment will compensate. Plus, we will live in a small village near Barbizon, which was known as the “Village of painters”, the birthplace of the 19th-century Barbizon school of art, a crucial precursor to Impressionism. One of my favorite painters Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot once before lived there.

That will be a wonderful journey. Except for Corot, as a painter and a home gardener, of course I will go visit Giverny, where the world famous “Monet’s Garden” is located. 

Fontainebleau has a beautiful, poetic Chinese name: Feng-Dan-Bai-Lu, which means “a place of red maples and white dew.” It says that the forests in Fontainebleau area are popular foraging spots due to the plentiful fungi growing there in autumn, and that people can take their wild harvest to the local pharmacies to let the pharmacists sort out the edible ones, therefore mushroom hunting will definitely be one of my must-dos there in the morning. Then I can make fresh mushroom pheasant stew (my unfulfilled invention 😅), dip baguette in it. Yummy!

Though I still have a lot of things to do this summer, and though summer has only roughly reached halfway, I already start to look forward to autumn.