What is Summer Made Of?

"That beautiful season the Summer!
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape. Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood."
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow--

And a good afternoon to all of you.  I'm in a good mood because my cooking is almost done.  Got out early and did my shopping so I could beat the worst of the heat.  It's treacherous here in the city.  Could actually reach 100 by afternoon.  At any rate, with the humidity, it will be feeling about 105 out there.  Yikes!!!  That's unheard of. 

I just don't know what to do with myself this summer.  To be honest, I just want it to go away.  I try so hard to embrace each of the seasons...especially since time seems to be passing by so quickly. Just as the above quote says, summer was such a dreamy and magical time when I was a child; it was almost as if time stood still with endless days of fun and games....afternoons at the lake...the welcoming of a summer storm.  Why, spinning around in the drenching rains was far better than a simple sprinkler. Camping out in the back yard and sitting out under the stars when all the world was asleep around me.  Long walks through the woods, picking fresh strawberries and grapes off of grandma's vines.  Oh, how sweet they were!  Running from the chickens, catching tadpoles...fireflies.  Those are some of the things you never forget...and it is good to remember those times for all too soon, in a flash of an eye, childhood gives way to adulthood.

The time that appears to move so slowly, those endless summers of childhood, suddenly become  nothing more than a distant memory as  we grow into adulthood and find ourselves burdened with work and bills, responsibilities that we never knew existed.
...and the magic disappears; we have no time for it anymore. What once were those dreamy times of summer days now become those endless days spent closed up in the office, rushing home to fix dinner, to tend to the household chores...and as the days pass by, we pay little to know attention to them...for we have far more important things to do. There will be plenty of time for fun later... And then, in what seems to be a flash of an eye, we find ourselves in the twilight years of our lives.


And time appears to speed ; it passes us by so much faster than ever before...and we wonder where all those years went.  One moment we were just a mere child with flushed cheeks running home for dinner; and now, although time moves faster, we find ourselves, our bodies moving oh, so much slower.  Our backs hurt, and our knees ache...and we watch those in their youth pass us by...and as our eyes begin to well with tears, we remember...those dreamy, magical summers when we were young.

What is summer made of?
Of opening buds and flowers;
Of sunshine and of shadow,
And gracious little showers,
Of birds that in the tree-tops
Sing sweetly all the day;
Of buttercups and daisies,
And breath of new-mown hay.

Of butterflies that hover
O'er every fragrant rose;
Of bees that gather honey
Where the honeysuckle grows.
Of brooks that murmur softly,
And thro' the meadows glide:
Of shadows shifting gently
Adown the mountain-side.

Of rainbows after showers,
Of starlight nights so still;
Of moonbeams shimmering softly
O'er every brook and rill.
Of mornings dawning sweetly
O'er dew-wet grass and flowers,
Oh! summer time is only
A life of golden hours! 

 --Mary Dow Brine 1816-1913)--