Our guest from Paris leaves tonight. During his stay he’s seen deer, squirrels, chipmunks, cardinals, jays, bluebirds, hummingbirds and the hawk I wrote about yesterday. Only the fox has been elusive.

But last night, as we dined on the deck, came the final performance. Deep in the summer grass, the fireflies emerged, blinking their messages of love and longing.

“Here I am,” they said, as they flitted through their mating dance. “Over here.” Slowly moving up from ground to sky, the bugs flashed in the darkness. Their pinpoints of light made the backyard seem a fairyland.

I doubt we’ll convince this Parisian that it’s better to live in the suburbs. He’s ridden into the city on Metro enough to know the length and the hassle of the ride. But I hope we’ve represented ourselves well. It’s not the only way to live — a fact that is painfully obvious to me every time we travel — but it has its pleasures.

(No firefly photos, I’m afraid. This is a shot of the Mekong River in Cambodia from a work trip in 2019.)