Midsummer in Sweden

📗 Do we not all carry in our hearts like a precious jewel the memory of a summer that was more wonderful than any other! The grass was greener and more sweet- smelling, the vegetation was more luxuriant and meadows and hedgerows were like huge flower beds, full of marguerites, wood crane's-bill and harebells. From the warm, leafy groves could be heard the grey cuckoos calling, and in the mellow twilight the silent moths hovered over the fields of rye. The water of the lakes and rivers with their flowering buckbean had a friendlier gleam that particular summer, and the perch and pike seemed more willing to swallow the bait on our hooks. The swallows darted here and there above the fields and streams, and the trees and bushes were like an orchestra playing a hundred different bird calls. The cows browsed among the rushes and the horses rolled over and over in the green pastures. The pine forest was full of the scent of warm needles, and swamps and bogs were steaming with the fragrance of marsh rosemary and of bog myrtle. Even the sun itself seemed warmer and more generous that particular summer.