Is it over with the summer?

We came back from the second leg of our holiday yesterday and I collided with a sense of disorientation so huge that I felt completely overwhelmed. It was as if my mind got detached from my body and stayed behind, hovering over a glass of Bulgarian wine in soul-searching conversations with old friends.

The fact that we traveled back on a cloudy, rainy day made me feel even more strongly that the summer is over and with it the carefree times, the fun, and the exploration. What if another winter of discontent is on the way? I'm referring to last winter when the combination of crappy weather, loneliness and lack of structure in a day kept me in very low spirits.

But I'm trying to borrow a little bit of Ruslan's indestructible optimism and think about many more sunny days that we'll have and all the fun things we'll be able to do. In the meantime, here are a few summer-y pictures I made just a few days ago:

This is an apple orchard in my best friend's yard. His parents have a country house in the village of Veliko Orasje where we spent two days having a great time without doing much.

These are my favorite apples--sour and very refreshing. Yummie!

My grandfather has a plum orchard and now is the prime season for picking them. They were too ripe for my taste--I generally prefer my fruits sour--but they are completely organic, since my grandfather doesn't use any pesticides. That's a great feeling, to be able to just pick something off a tree and eat it, without worrying about washing off layers of chemicals.

Quince in my grandfather's yard. They are too sour still--even for me.