Summer’s Coming In

Despite the calendar date: Sumer is icumen in.

This medieval round is delightful, gay, and carefree. I can easily imagine Renaissance women dancing around a maypole, celebrating the change of season.

When I awake these days, I go outside with my cup of hot tea to visit the garden. Every day the beans grow higher, though NOT yet climbing; the cucumbers are 2 inches high, yet not spreading; the kale and chard are showing a bit of color. Something has dug with its little paw in a couple of pots next to the beds. I’m still thinking of how to restrain them. There’s also the need to weed—which means making sure I do not pull the wrong thing. I’m overly cautious.

Last night there was a raccoon outside my door. I knew it was beginning to rain and thought: How can rain feel scratchy? When I looked over and saw it with its paws on my French doors, scratching at the window. I was entirely freaked out. I stuffed cotton under the door, in a little space opened up since the Tiny House is settling. Later, when turning off the light, I saw the animal pacing the patio and the cat at my daughter’s house on high alert inside the sliding doors—waiting to pounce.

After getting home from Sleeping Bear Dunes last week in the rain, the weekend turned drier and warmer. On Friday was my grandson’s end of (nursery) school picnic, then we went to a carnival in the parking lot of where I work to celebrate the end of school, then later yet he went to the library for the Summer Reading kick-off bash. At all three events were free ice cream treats.

Sumer is icumen in—sing, cuckoo!

cozy seasonal display next to my chair