And we're back

Summer is a wonderful, magical time. The days seem endless; the skies bright and blue; and we allow ourselves to believe that things can be forgotten for a few weeks; that 'normal' life can be paused while we relax and unwind for awhile. Children can do this with ease, forgetting all about the lessons and classwork they just completed moments before bursting through the schools doors for the final time. Adults need more time to adjust to personal freedom and relaxed demands on their time. Many find they don't adjust well to non structured lives though they'll not admit it. Many more find that after enough time has passed they can indeed slow down and begin to enjoy the finer more subtle things that life has placed around them - but after those few weeks of time off its back to familiar routines and all that progress is forgotten.

It's turned fall here again, and we find ourselves astonished that summer seems to have vanished so quickly once more, if it really ever came at all. It did of course - we had heat and sunshine this year and enjoyed the days we were given, in between the necessary rains and required irritants like mosquitoes and early morning lawn mowers - but as the calendar turns again those days are memories now, distant reminders that things change and move on. The gardens are pulled, the flowers long past their prime have been trimmed back or pruned away. The pools have been drained and scrubbed and stored; the windows need washing again though - better write that on the list...

The mornings are cooler, the leaves are changing colour and we're surrounded by tomatoes, boxes of them in the basement, the green ones ripening as they sit, the red ones getting sweeter and more juicy. And the sealers have returned from their year long pantry slumber, ready to be filled with mounds of fruit - pears and peaches in our case, bushels of them in the kitchen waiting to be boiled and sliced and packed in their sweet surroundings to be savoured on some dreary day in the dead of winter, a snapshot of warmer days waiting to be rediscovered.

So its back to the routines. School starts in a few days, the streets will be brimming with children again. Football is at the midway point of the season already, and that means hockey is just around the corner too, and don't forget about piano lessons.
Life is about to get busy again. On many fronts.

We'd better get ready.

You go ahead. I think I'll linger just a while longer and enjoy those finer things before its too late.