Going Fast!

How can August be halfway through?

I still have so much summer to do!

The sun is out,

It's heating up,

Humidity is high,

August's steamy,

Sultry ways,

Will soon go

Bye, bye, bye.

The summer months always seem to fly by. I feel like it was just the middle of June yesterday and here we are in the middle of August already! Every year when the school year ends, I hang up my lunch lady hat and apron for the summer and make plans for things I want to do during my time off. I have a stack of books, writing goals, closets I want to clean out, storage boxes I want to sort through, and people I want to catch up with over lunch.  So far this year I've only read a couple of books, made one trip to drop off donations at the Salvation Army store, and gone to lunch twice. My writing goals are faring a but better, but are not close to being realized. I don't know where the time has gone! Maybe I've spent more time admiring the flowers we planted in pots, like the pink begonias our neighbor gave us in exchange for a couple tomato plants. Perhaps I've spent more time watching clouds float by and gazing at the colors of sunsets, or musing over the bees gathering pollen from flowers. Whatever it is that I've been doing instead of what I planned, it's been pleasant. The point of time off work is to relax and refresh, so I guess I've done that but would enjoy having more time to do it!

These are pink begonias our neighbor gave us. They've done well and are so pretty!

My husband trimmed the Wisteria so it is no longer eating the deck. Yay!

Welcome Summer!

Welcome Summer,

You are hot!

Some of us like that a lot,

Some prefer dear Autumn's ways, 

With cooler air and shorter days,

But Summer now that you are here,

You'll go too fast is what I fear,

I love your sunny, longer days,

And in the twilight how fireflies play,

I will enjoy the parts I like,

But Humidity can take a hike!

Here we are at the end of June.  Summer is finally here and we have been having some truly wonderful weather with just the right mix of sun and rain to make flowers bloom and vegetable gardens grow. Oddly enough so far we have not had the usual invasion of spiders so I've been really enjoying spending time out side reading and just contemplating the sky and thinking poetic thoughts about the sunset. I think it's one of the things I like most about summer, the time to simply watch baby birds learning to fly, clouds drift lazily across the sky, and the setting sun coloring the sky with shades of gold and rose and purple. I have yet to see the fireflies, but with the sun setting so late in the evening I'm not outside when they are rising up out of the grass.  In another few weeks, when we get to the middle of July, the sun will set earlier and I will be watching those fireflies and remembering all the nights I spent with my brothers running around the yard catching them and putting them in a mayonnaise jar to watch them crawl around and light up in the dark.  All the games of hide and seek, tag, and Frisbee we played run through my mind when I'm sitting out in the evening, my husband and I sharing our memories from when we each were children.  I remember what was probably one of the last times I played Frisbee was either the summer before, or the one after my senior year of high school before I went to college. We lived across the street from an elementary school which had a huge field in front of it where we used to play.  That summer we took to gathering as many of our friends as wanted to join in, my brothers and I, and play keep away with the Frisbee.  The one game that sticks out most in my mind is commonly referred to as our Frisbee-kill-a-thon, which we played with a glow in the dark disc. I think it may have been boys against girls, but on certain details my memory is fuzzy.  It was dark in that field, and I recall lots of laughter, squeals, falling on top of each other wrestling for the Frisbee and just that feeling you get only on certain occasions when it feels like the whole world is perfect.  We had such fun that hot, sticky, summer night!  I'm not sure if that Frisbee survived, but I think I recall that we all signed it before breaking up the game.  My friends and I sat under the street light across from my house talking, and I seem to remember a cop stopping to ask what we were doing at that hour.  It can't have been any later than 11:00 or so, but in our sleepy little town in the 70's I guess that was late.  Life is much tamer now and I'm lucky if I stay awake past 10:00 at night!  But oh those summer nights of my youth are fun to reminisce about!