Now this is more like it.

As I am writing, I am sitting on my little deck as the late afternoon sun dapples the hilltop behind the house and paints broad, golden swaths across my lawn. It is 73 glorious degrees with a relative humidity below 43 percent.

If I stand in the sunshine, I feel perfection itself. But if I move one toe into the shade of the lawn chair, and it gets so sweetly almost chilly. Today, I picked up my daughter early from (what she calls) school, and we met Dad for lunch. When it was time to leave, my 3-year-old walked out of the deli, spread her arms wide and said, "Let's take a walk." So we did.

We took a long walk. We held hands and talked about the magic show she saw at school and sang songs and talked about the magic show and stopped to look at flowers and talked about the rabbit in the magic show ...

It was so lovely, I wanted to sit down and write a thank you note to the day for giving me such a gift. After supper, maybe we will all jump in the mommyvan and drive out under the lavender sky in search of ice cream or shooting stars. We will gasp at the size of the moon on the horizon.

And tonight, we will leave open a few windows and sleep under the light down blanket. If Saint Peter himself were to emerge from my garden amid a chorus of angels and offer me a plate of tiramisu and a bottle of small batch bourbon, I would not be one bit surprised.

Heaven. Absolute heaven.

Shhh. I know what you're thinking.

"Sure it's nice now, but just wait 'til winter."

I know, I know.

When we moved here in March, slogging through slush and mud and shivering under snowfalls in April and May, everyone was dismayed.

"Why did you leave Florida to come HERE?" they asked.

This is why.

This week with its Technicolor skies, blankets of wildflowers waving on the hillsides, early mornings that snap like apples and a breeze that smells just ever so little like Canada - this is why we're here. Back in Florida, our friends are laboring through a hot summer that just won't end. Summer vacation, on the other hand, has ended, and all the youngsters are back at their desks - their sweaty, smelly little desks.

The lawns down there are dry, the gardens are a tangle of shriveled husks and people like me have bolted their doors and sworn not to emerge from their air-conditioned homes until October. They are hoping that, if they're extraordinarily lucky, October there will feel just like this week here.

Of course, now that we've established with the curious why we're here in New York, my family has begun to hear the constant refrain of "Winter, winter, winter." "Have you been through a winter?"

"Just you wait until winter."

"Florida? Oh, you guys are gonna LOVE February."

To which I say, Back off.

Maybe we WILL love February.

Maybe we will do in winter exactly the same thing we did during summers in Florida: Cocoon. We'll cook soup and watch hours and hours of brain-melting TV.

I will become even more passionately invested in the outcome of "Project Runway."

February in Central New York is TV's raison d'etre, isn't it?

Then again, maybe we won't need the high quality entertainment of Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn. Maybe we'll thrive in that harsh climate. Maybe we will take to winter like fish take to water or sweat takes to school children in August in Florida.

Elizabeth Trever Buchinger is a freelance writer who couldn't be happier to slip on a sweater in August. She can be reached at VillageWordsmith@hughes.net