It’s summertime – it’s hot and muggy but I am not complaining. Just turn up the air if it gets to you…
At least if you go out, you don’t need a winter coat and boots and you don’t have to shovel snow.
You know I dream about this time of year on those long, dark cold days in February.
Summer is my favorite time of year, a time especially made for kids and grownups alike.
Some of the very best things about summer are hazy evenings when the sun lazily sets sometime after 9 p.m. and the scent of flowers and fresh cut grass is everywhere.
You see couples strolling around town in the evening, youngsters riding bikes and skateboards, or swimming in the afternoon and catching frogs, or minnows in the edge of the river.
These days are made for spinning on a tire swing in the shade and for splashing in a wading pool, or sitting around a bonfire after dark and roasting marshmallows over the coals of a dying fire.
There’s something exciting about a sudden summer thunderstorm crashing through the sky just after dark and about that incredible fresh smell that comes right after the rain.
One of the reasons I loved our home on the Tobacco so much was how peaceful it was, just sitting on the steps at the edge of the river in the evening listening to the frogs singing in the twilight.
Just driving around the area this time of year can be an adventure. You are apt to see deer wandering most anywhere, some of them with fawns. We have seen twins everywhere on our travels, especially along Stephenson Road and Herrick.
I love going up to our camper near Roscommon in the summertime. You wake up to birds singing at dawn and listen to another chorus again just before the sun sets on a dead calm warm evening.
In fact, we were up just last weekend for a relaxing time, not doing much, just dinner and visiting with family and playing our favorite dice game afterwards. Jack and Margo were the big winners…
Jack did manage to squeeze some chores in. He mowed all around our 5th wheel and up the trail and even cleaned up our nephew and nieces place, the renovated old Richardson schoolhouse they live in. It is the place where Dad and all my Aunts and Uncles went to school back in the early 1900s.
Back home again on Sunday afternoon (with a stop at the Custard Cup for ice cream in Houghton Lake) then back to the “big camper.”
When we stopped for our very favorite summer treat we ran into Ken and Jodi Chinavare who came up from Clare to enjoy some of that delicious frozen custard too. It is amazing the people you run into when you are away from home…
Back to my summer rambling.
It is a time to be outside as much as possible, watching the sun light up the eastern sky in the morning, taking a nap in the hammock in the afternoon (when we had one) and listening to the chattering geese heading back to Stevenson Lake for the night just after the sun sets.
For kids, it’s never ending days of play, outside with friends, going to the lake or river and jumping in that shivery cold water on a blazing hot afternoon.
It is sitting on the riverbank or in a fishing boat on the lake and not even minding if the fish aren’t biting that day. Its ice cream cones or popscicles in the shade or munching on big chunks of watermelon and seeing who can spit the seeds the farthest.
It is long bike rides, picnics on a blanket in the yard and lying on your back after dark to count the stars, all activities we have loved over the years.
It’s summertime. Don’t you wish you could be a kid again?