Even though we say we welcome summer after school is out, the season seems to tease us with Starlight Concerts and art festivals until the smoke of fireworks and barbecue grills wakes us up to the Fourth of July. Summer is half gone. School will start in a few weeks and yet picnics and grill-outs, outdoor movies and concerts, farmers markets, art fairs and plays await.

So many plans, so little time. So many these, so little that.

July is like that. This is the month that tempts us to make lists: books to read, people to see, places to visit, things to learn, recipes to try, miles run or walked, pounds lost or gained. All of which are just tricks to make us feel we are in control, that somehow we are harnessing time so the summer will not slip away.

But time glides on, and, regardless of our emotions and wishes, we stay in its web, or its river or its circle, too often trying to adjust its pace to our own. The changing light of summer can do that.

So here is our end-of-summer list:

Enjoy the remaining City-sponsored entertainment: Starlight Concerts; the Ethnic Arts Festival this weekend and the Lakeshore Arts Festival, Aug. 1 and 2;

Regardless of your faith, listen to the soaring voices at the annual Family Focus Gospel Fest, beginning at noon on Aug. 1;

Read “Go Set a Watchman” by Harper Lee;

Think about the dwarf planet Pluto;

Walk along the water: at the lakefront, in the Arboretum or Twiggs Park, around the Arrington Lagoon at Dawes Park or the lagoon at Lovelace Park;

People-watch at Fountain Square;

See how many shades of green are in a back yard or a single Evanston park;

Watch the Perseid meteor shower in early August;

Get a head start on “Into the Beautiful North” by Luis Alberto Urrea, the book selected for Evanston’s Big Read;

Banish all thoughts of a polar vortex.