I’ve had meditation on my to-do list for a long time. Mindfulness appears to be a contented state populated by calm, sane people who move slowly, wear their serenity like a summer sheath and have private smiles indicating that they know something others don’t quite get. They are not rushing around with disheveled minds, tripping over the dog and losing their keys.

I thought I might attempt the mindful thing some day. I was too pre-occupied in the 1960s and 70s to “Be Here Now.” That was for hippies who didn’t work, I thought. Besides I wasn’t sure I had the temperament for meditation. I tend to reach more outward than inward. And who has time to just sit?

Now that I am part of the population of unstructured, part-time self-employed, I can give myself a day to listen and not talk. So, for my birthday, I booked a one-day retreat at Spirit Rock meditation center in Marin. My serene friend Neva has been going there for years and I tagged along. It was like going to camp for the first time, and I wanted a buddy.

The cluster of handsome rustic buildings with signs warning “silence please” is a favorite spot for Buddhist teaching but you don’t have to become a Buddhist to meditate. Spirituality-wise, I’m not sure what I am. I’d have to check the box that says “still looking.” But I felt ready to work on being in the moment.

Neva said meditation helps shut out the din and considering the amount of din we’re in, a time-out seemed in order. Inside, she took a chair, got a pillow for her feet and back and wrapped in a blanket. We looked like dowagers bundled on the deck of a cruise ship.

To not talk, I found, was a relief more than a challenge. It was surprisingly comfortable to be with 60 people for seven hours and not need to say anything witty or at all.

Our teacher, the famous Jewish Buddhist author Sylvia Boorstein, said we would start by sitting for 20 minutes. In yoga class the teacher often includes a short meditation during which we are to visualize a place of peace and beauty. But I seldom get there. I scramble to get to a beach or maybe the mountains and then she rings a bell and it’s over.

At Spirit Rock I wondered about what to visualize and the guy behind me coughing and when would I go to the Ladies Room. I checked my watch to see my skittery thoughts had taken up two minutes. Then I remembered Sylvia saying sometimes it works to just sit and let your body and mind find its natural peace.

Suddenly the 20 minutes were over and I grinned at my friend. So something had happened. Or nothing had happened.

We took our lunch out in the sun. I tried to chew mindfully. No one whispered or checked their messages. On the hill above sat a Buddha statue, pensive and plump as a happy cat.

Having a relaxed mind comes easier when you are in a quiet, safe spot separate from the real world. I did have a wild worry about the nutty prayerful out there who attack other people’s religions and what if some day they go after those who sit cross-legged and say Namaste.

Sylvia said that when people leave a retreat they often feel vulnerable. She thinks that’s okay. She said “If everyone in the world felt vulnerable we’d stop killing each other.”

Some poetically grieve for the last rose of summer, but I say bring on the Naked Ladies.

I first started noticing the flashy pink lily, technically a type of Amaryllis known as the Belladonna lily, on a hike down the Mendocino and Sonoma coasts. Some women hikers suddenly whooped and ran into a field to each emerge with a single bubblegum-colored bloom stuck in their hats. And the other hikers cried, “Here come the Naked Ladies.”

From then on I was smitten by the spirit and the name. A favorite late summer Northern California image is of a flash of pink in a brown field with a swath of blue ocean for a backdrop.

Standing there in the sun, balanced on a tall thin stalk, reaching up on tiptoe, demanding attention, the Naked Lady tosses her tendrils after so many of the pretties in the garden have given up.

Named for its absence of leaves, the Naked Lady pops up around late August. A teacher friend said she always dreaded seeing them arrive because it meant school would soon start and her summer was over.

The Ladies returned this year about on time. I worried that they’d be off schedule like the tomatoes and every growing thing due to our chilly, gray summer. But the Naked Ladies expose their flesh no matter the temperature.

Confident, resilient beauties full of attitude, they are like so many ladies of late summer.

You see them standing in a row across a hill, the surviving residents of a one-time garden next to a one-time farmhouse. Whoever planted them has moved on, but the Ladies just keep on.

Sometimes you’ll see them in a chorus line, all leaning to one side, like they are ready to do a group shuffle-tap. Then there are the rogue Ladies, who just decided to show up in front of a cattle fence or pose next to a pile of rocks.

Certainly they’re not everyone’s favorite flower. Some find them quite gaudy and simply too bare without any foliage. And their perfume can be a problem. Sugary and cloying, the Naked Lady scent is best left outdoors to blow in the wind. Bring them in the house and the smell is as overwhelming as too much talcum in a hot yoga class.

But the sight of them is sweet. This week I stopped to admire one regal bloom on a bluff above Bodega Bay. It was a rare clear day and she waved to me from her perch in the brown grass. A fog horn wailed to say that darned old chilly marine layer is probably coming back.

But a lady, if she’s wise, knows to live in the moment.

I don’t know how long you have to live in the Bay Area to accept that our summers are stubborn. Lingering low clouds has pretty much been the lingering forecast. Here it is not the fog that creeps in on little cat feet but the sun. The fog rushes in like a pushy old uncle who stays past his welcome. The sun is a shy child who comes out for a brief wink.

For most of July the common grousing has been about a lack of sun. We call it ridiculous, even pukey. I would add disappointing but I can’t speak for all. The redwoods, I understand, simply adore a foggy summer.

California summers have always surprised visitors as well as locals. There’s the old Mark Twain comment that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. And what Giants fan has not suffered the chill of an August day game? Is there a Sonoma County child who does not equate summer swim lessons with blue lips and chattering teeth?

People here often refer to the summer weather as June gloom, which this season pushed into July.

How hot is it not?

It is so not hot that the first tomato I bought at our farmer’s market was from the northern California growing town of Winters. Where they have real summers. My own Early Girls are still rubbing their eyes and trying to wake up. The brave little Sun Golds are not much bigger than a goose bump.

It is so not hot that when we went to see Macbeth in the park, I wore gloves. My friends wore sleeping bags. Had the lovely Lady Macbeth not done herself in, she might have otherwise succumbed to pneumonia, walking around in bare feet and strapless gown.

One forgets from year to year. You dig out the linen pants and sandals, hang out the patio lights and cross your fingers. Here we do not rush the season, we wait for it. I saw one hopeful woman in shorts. But she was also wearing her Ugg boots.

Oh sure, we’ve had some irregular hot days when the newspapers shows kids eating ice cream in wading pools. Just like the rest of the country. Speaking of which, it has been so not hot here that a Californian can suffer Fahrenheit envy, maybe even wishing she were back in hot, sticky Pennsylvania.

It is so not hot here the dog runs inside and lies down expectantly in front of the gas heater, willing me to turn it on. No, I say, it’s not that cold. And yet I see wood smoke coming out of neighborhood chimneys.

A friend of my daughter’s on vacation from D.C. came over to borrow a bike and I apologized for our crummy weather. He looked at me like I was cracked. He’d been in three digit temperatures for days.

He doesn’t understand that some of us yearn to wake up with the sun on our pillow, to walk outside on a warm deck. To look forward to a balmy night when you can sit under the moon, barefoot and strapless.

But now, we must screw our courage to the sticking place and patiently wait for real summer. It’s usually here by September.