P.S.-Pooh Says...

"What day is it? - 'It's today' - squeaked Piglet. 'My favourite day' - said Pooh."- A.A. Milne

03 September 2018

The Best of What Might Be-Summer Sails Away

“Summertime is always the best of what might be.” -Charles Bowden

I cannot quite get my head around this summer-I know, I know, I whine about this every Labor Day weekend, but here it is again-a summer sails away. It is going to feel like 100 degrees out there today but still I just flipped the calendar pages to September,yes I still do real calendars! Didn't  I just turn those same pages to June? Is it growing older that make Summertime fly? How often in the past few days have you heard "Can you believe it is Labor Day?" NO! I CANNOT!  Someone go find me June, July... A blink and suddenly the skies grow dark earlier,  scarecrows and even bags of trick or treat candy are everywhere,leaves start to drop...and suddenly September.


Labor Day weekend of course always feels like an abrupt and an unwelcome end to summer.  For me this year it is particularly unsettling as summer 2018 was just so grumpy.  The weather was grumpy, the news was grumpy and even the gardens of Camp MP were grumpy-growing out of bounds like a jungle or in some spots showing no effort or joyful blooms at all as the critters ruled and burrowed and chomped away...and I was grumpy along with it.  I can count on two fingers when I got to just sit and do a summer day, lazy days with a book-in fact the pile of books that called in May remain unopened.  Can I get a Do-Over on summer 2018??? Mainly I want to slow it down and not have the golden days be a blur and just hold to "the best of what might be."
"Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language." -Henry James

Summer after all is supposed to be the time of year that everything slows down, nothing much is scheduled of a serious nature during the summer months- everyone is away, or going away, or just coming back from being away...and in summer it is not only perfectly  acceptable, but also fashionable, to be lazy and just sit with a book.  Nights are slow in coming and have a special air with sounds that open windows welcome in-dogs barking, kids riding by on their bikes, night crickets, and of course baseball on the radio...


 September in New England should not to be dismissed, the skies are glorious and the weather rides the change toward sweater weather.  This weekend, however, is a marker, closing the door on "true summer" the season that gives us permission to Go Play Outside.  With Labor Day we have to come in, toss the flip flops aside and put "practical shoes" on--we have to Go Back to School and back to our desks piled high with all the things we said we would get to "after Labor Day". Just this week there  have been subtle signs of the season changing ...a few dry leaves turned on the trees, Mums filling the nurseries, Halloween cards on the racks and my favorite-the "plunking" of acorns as they fall and hit my neighbor's deck.  Mother Nature is serious about her calendar even if I am not.  I cling to summer well into November!



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Don't get me wrong, I adore  the fall- crisp air, glorious colors, tweeds,and crunchy knits, the scent of cinnamon and  apples, piles of pumpkins, the whole New England bit.  Soon I will start digging out the tired blooms and replace them with  happy faced fall pansies and curly pink flowering kale.  I might even run for the needles and cast on some cables!!

Labor Day, however, means we have to be grown ups again, not such a bad thing but you sort of get used to wearing your summer brain.  The new season also means a new start-every one of us remembers what the day after Labor Day always meant-new shoes, a fresh box of crayons, a new teacher and a brand new year--much more fun than New Year's Day!



 No reason Fall can't welcome in a whole new start-I like the idea!---after this grumpy summer how welcome hitting restart would be-if only!!  but if its OK with everyone I'll delay rowing the boat ashore just yet, and leave my flip flops by the back door for at least a few more weeks.


 “All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer — one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going — one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.” – Lucy Maud Montgomery