Another Iced Tea Chat: 31 Days of Summer


Come in and have a cool drink with me.  What shall it be today?  Just anything at all as long as it's cold and full of ice?  I agree!

We've worked hard this summer. In addition to all the mowing and work about the homes we've been doing, I've kept up with housework, taken time out to go with the children to the library, baby sat when needed, worked at sundry little extra jobs, and written up a storm.  I'm ready to slow down and enjoy this season.

I've enjoyed this spate of hard work and creativity, but I know myself well.  If I continue without a break, I'll run dry.  Not only do I not want that to happen, especially creatively, but I have no way of knowing what each season of life might bring and right now there's a lull.  


I realized today that shortly we'll be headed into another month, the last month of summer.  The last month in which I stand a hope of getting a fresh locally grown peach if the season holds out through the first week. The last month to have freshly made peach ice cream.  The children are going back to school. Summer is flying past and I long to hold onto it with both hands and drag it back all over again so I can enjoy the parts I feel I've missed. 

I don't want to work hard this month.  I simply want to do what has to be done (mowing, cleaning, watering plants) and then I want to play and rest.  I want to literally stop and smell the roses, enjoy the current season, and take a little vacation albeit right here at home.

My goals for August are going to be different.  Oh, we'll still have to do some yard work and there will always be housework, but I'm dropping projects whether they are finished or not.  Work always waits. Writing will slow down for this month.  I'm going to scale back to just an abbreviated weekly diary until Labor Day, much as I've done the past few years for the month of July.  Mostly I want to enjoy what I can of the 'lazy hazy crazy days of summer' and feel a little less like a hamster on a wheel.

Knowing how deeply I've regretted summer's passing these last years, this year I've decided that for the 31 days of August, I will celebrate summer in some form every single day.  Perhaps it's a 10-minute sun bath, if I can last that long, or gathering a bouquet for indoors (if I have any flowers by then...If not I'll buy some!).  Perhaps I'll get a sprinkler and sit on the patio and enjoy that refreshing cold water.  Or I'll have a tomato sandwich for lunch using a fresh, in season, just pulled from the vine, tomato that is still warm from the sun. Maybe it will be to plant a fall garden.  Most crops will do well here and produce a second crop before frost.  It's not too late to have a harvest.  We haven't fired up the grill even once this year.  A hamburger or steak off the grill would be a lovely thing to do for a summer meal.

Vacation might not be a possibility at all this year.  Prices shocked us in Spring, and we bought chairs with the money we set aside instead.  I've been trying to squirrel away a little each month since then.  I'd decided mid-July to look at our usual place and perhaps we'd have a fall vacation.  I could work out summer and save like crazy.  But it seems they are entirely booked up for all of October.  I can take a hint...maybe this isn't the year to go back to St. Augustine. 

I've set a small amount of money aside for each week of this month and it's my plan to lure John away from home.  An overnight stay could happen.  Just one night away won't stretch the budget too hard.

And day trips are entirely possible. There are certain things we do only on vacation.  We visit museums and historic sites.  We picnic at a state park or lake.  Perhaps we might go visit a site or two that I've just been longing to see. I want it to feel like a vacation even if it is just for a day or one night. 

We usually have an adult beverage on the balcony overlooking the ocean before supper.  Why not have one while sitting on our own front porch, overlooking the yard?  We buy deli meats we'd normally forgo when on vacation and we buy a weird (aka fancy) cheese.  We have an appetizer with our adult beverages.  Those things can easily be done here at home.

Not everything we do has to cost any money.  There are 31 days ahead.  Surely, I can come up with 31 unique summertime treats that are free or very cost effective and just ENJOY summer!  I don't have a complete plan of all that we might do this month just yet, but I do have a few ideas.  Now to just DO those things.

Don't you wish sometimes, you could just turn back the clock and revisit a certain place and have it all as it was once again?  I don't very often but now and then I'd love to revisit certain moments in my life.

When we were children, we were restless all summer long.  We lived for those days we could spend here on this property with Granny.  She'd make us do chores in the morning and then turn us loose after lunch, shooing us outdoors once more. Since she lived without air conditioning it was no hardship for us to take off somewhere outdoors.  We'd wander down to the wooded area between pastures and play on the cool green mossy ground under the trees.  We'd build houses.  We'd pretend to be pioneers or cowboys and Indians.  

If that palled, we'd take advantage of the free-flowing creek that ran across the property.  We would usually get in the wide place in the creek where the cows would cross from the back pasture to those closer to the house and build a dam to try and create a swimming hole.  That spot never did get deep enough for swimming, but we often had water up to our knees, and that allowed us to get good and wet.  It was refreshing play and kept us busy enough.

I'm sure Granny never minded because she got some much-needed quiet time to herself while we all were occupied elsewhere.  She had a system to insure we were okay.  She'd step out in her back yard and "Yoo-hoo!" and we'd "Yoo-hoo!" right back.  If we didn't, she'd wander down the field road to look for us.  We did NOT want Granny to come for us because by the time she found us, she'd be good and mad and equipped with a switch. 

When we were tired of playing amongst the little trees and in the water, we'd come back home.  Usually about this time Granny would call us to eat a snack.  She always had a big pitcher of tea or Kool-Aid and some sort of cheap store-bought cookie or watermelon or cantaloupe, or peaches.  We'd sit under the trees in the back yard on the brick patio the boys had cobbled together from bricks and sand for her, and we'd rock in the chairs or glide gently back and forth on the glider and we'd all talk, Granny right there with us.  We generally stayed there until time to prepare supper.

Now and then Granny would make hamburgers on the grill outdoors but mostly we cooked dinner indoors.  Granny had a job for each of us at mealtime and a repertoire of easy simple meals that she seemed to only serve when we visited, never at any other time.  After supper, we all helped clean and then we headed right back outdoors to rock and glide and chatter away.  Several of us had books and read.  When it started to get dark and the mosquitoes were aggravating us, we'd all go indoors and begin the routine of getting ready for bed.  Granny had one spare room, a sleeper sofa, a folding bed that she parked behind the door during the day and so she managed a place for all of us to sleep.  After baths and getting into pajamas we'd play Gin Rummy or Go Fish.  Someone might read out loud, or those of us that enjoyed reading would read (usually me, Elaine and Granny).  I don't recall us ever watching television in summer. 

There were days we'd set up the old canvas tent and then we'd spend the night outdoors.  Yes, it was mighty warm, especially when all seven of us just fit by lying side by side, lol, but you know we never complained of being hot or the ground of being hard.  And it was always fun to wake up in the morning and wonder why we each had managed to change places but none of us had ever been aware of moving.

If the summer weeks, we spent here sound idyllic they were in so many ways.  We were happy here, all of us, and we were sure of Granny.  We all lived our own separate horrors at home but here we were truly allowed to be the children we were meant to be.  We all came here willingly even in our teens to spend time with Granny and each other and later all of us had the opportunity to have our own bit of this place.

Years later, when my Amie and Sam were little, we spent an entire summer at the swimming pool near our home.  That might sound ridiculous, but we lived in a house with poor air circulation and no air conditioning.  It was so hot and stuffy.  Every day after lunch we packed up and headed to a swimming pool that was fed by an artesian spring.  That water was cold, often registering around 58F and did it ever feel awesome on a 100F day!  We were there every day that it was open.  Membership cost was low and most definitely cheaper than buying an air conditioner and paying the electric bill once it was installed.   We'd pack a bag with snacks, and we stayed right there until the pool closed each day.  We weren't the only ones who utilized that pool.  There was a whole crowd of people and like us they showed up every single day.

I always made a point of slipping into the pool for at least an hour before we headed home.  It lowered my body temperature, and I would be cool as a cucumber all evening long at home, lol.  In those days my first husband was seldom home prior to 7pm.  Supper was often an easy meal.  It was, truthfully, a glorious way to spend summer and I never once regretted the time we spent enjoying the season.  But then I went to school and to work and that ended those sorts of summer days.  

Those were summer days of long ago.  Now I'm ready to create memories of summer in this season of life.  I'm going to enjoy summer.  What about you?


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8 comments:

Lana said...

I kind of feel like we haven't had summer yet because we have not been to the lake. We moved our weeks because our middle son wanted to come for 4th of July and we cannot have dogs at the lake house. So now we ae going over Labor Day and our oldest son's family is coming to stay for a few days that weekend. We did have a glorious day in the NC mountains yesterday for my husband's birthday. But, this summer has been taken over by the treatments for my genetic disease and they have dictated what we can do every single day. Not complaining but grateful that I can do them because I am getting better slowly.

terricheney said...

It does feel summer has been fuller of work this year than otherwise.

Lisa from Indiana said...

Your childhood summers at your Granny's sound heavenly. Mine were similar. Makes me want to be a child again!

jnkbake said...

Awe, your summers at your Granny's house sound so much like mine back then. Oh, to run around with all the cousins again! But we are spread all over the U.S. now. Thanks for your memories! This last month of summer will be spent getting all our affairs in order and then afterwards I'll celebrate with a trip!

Tammy said...

Summers without air conditioning, I remember them well. Flipping my pillow back and forth for the "cool" side. Sometimes we might get a fan in our room but pretty much we did not. And we lived to tell about it. Lol. I will not give up the central air, though.

I am currently in the countdown to fall, but will try to enjoy this next month somewhat. The garden is almost to the point of my needing to be out there a few mornings a week instead of one, but it will be very early to enjoy the cooler morning temps and the shade. I tend to hibernate in the house when it's hot and humid...

I do love reading about your times at Granny's house. My times with my grandmothers were different, but, yes, I'd love to go back in time to relive them. ♥

susie @ persimmon moon cottage said...

Summers were always the best time of the year for me, especially as a child. Summers without air conditioning ended at our house when I was about 8 years old and my Dad decided to get Central Air Conditioning. They bought the air conditioner from Montgomery Ward I believe, but I could be wrong. My Dad installed the whole thing, the house already had the necessary air vents, so my Dad did the concrete pad for the air conditioner and did all of the electrical and the necessary vent work to hook it into what was there, and did the wiring for the thermostat. My Dad was outside all day for his work as a carpenter, and then a carpenter supervisor, so we were lucky he had the knowledge that he could put in the Central Air. I know that air conditioning felt good to him after being outside all day every day.

My Mom loved that Central Air, especially when she did tomato canning and made grape jelly from the grapes in our yard, and when she made jelly from the wild grapes we picked from the islands in the Mississippi. We spent every weekend at sandbars on the Mississippi. My Dad built a wood with a fiberglass layer 19 foot cabin cruiser and we could zoom up the Mississippi to a nice, pristine sandbar. My Mom would fish all day and all night, I fished sometimes, and swam a lot and we slept in the boat during the night and my Mom fished from the boat all night with a bell on her rod to hear when she had a bite. Sometimes she would see a beaver or two swim by. At one sandbar she shined the flashlight up toward where the willows grew, and there were dozens of sets of eyes reflecting back at her and there were a few of the cats at the edge of the water trying to catch frogs and things to eat. All of those eyes shining out of the willows were kind of scary looking. We always wondered how there could have been so many cats at that sandbar. Maybe someone had tried to drown some kittens and they escaped to the sandbar.

Before the air conditioning, there was a big window fan in my bedroom window. It cooled the whole house to where it got downright cold sometimes toward morning. I loved sleeping with all of the fresh air and birds singing early and my mom had a wire arbor over our concrete fishpond to make morning shade there. When the wisteria bloomed they smelled so good, and in spring I would fall asleep to the sound of toads trilling, calling for mates to come. When the toads all got together, they laid their eggs in the fishpond.One time my friend asked me what that strange sound was that came from our backyard. It sounded like a UFO she said. I told her that it was toads singing.

I never got to spend much time at my grandparents place down in Southeast Missouri. I wish I would have. I loved them so much. There were a few time that we got together down there and my cousins were there. We always had so much fun playing in the creek across the road from their house. My oldest girl cousin wanted nothing to do with us younger kids playing in the creek and turning over rocks to find crawdads, but she did come out long enough one time to get her back terribly sunburned, she was a red head and very fair skinned. My grandma put cold buttermilk on her sun burn.I think it might have been on a cloth, but I am not sure. My cousin still talks about it now, how good that cold buttermilk felt on her sunburned skin. She's in her late 70's now. At Grandma and Grandpa's house it would always get almost cold by dawn even after the day had been hot. Maybe it was that they were in a valley and that cold water creek was so near.

I don't do so many fun things now days in summer, and when it's hot, I get sickish outside if I am not careful, but if I had the power, I would stretch a long spring season into a summer about three weeks longer than it is now, stretch out the pretty days of early and mid fall, and mostly do away with winter. Maybe five days of just enough snow for the kids to play in, sled in, and make snowmen. Spring and summer will always be my favorites.

terricheney said...

Lisa, I don't remember ever having a 'bad' visit with Granny and that's the truth. I desperately wish at times I could turn back time for just a half day. But then choosing the day to turn back to would be so hard!

JnBake, I have no idea where my cousins are though they are still fairly nearby but the family sort of dropped off all communications really.

Tammy time with Grandmother was different than with Granny but just as nice if more rare.

Susie, thank you! That was a lovely sharing of memories!

Unknown said...

Thank you for the inspiration to enjoy the last month of summer! Here in the PNW fall can be beautiful and warm OR it can be rainy and cool. We took the all American road trip in July and saw Mount Rushmore, Devil's Tower, the Badlands and Yellowstone. Now I want to enjoy a beach day at Deception Pass, fresh fruits, berries and veggies, smores by the firepit and the feel of the hot sun before it's gone. I hope your August is everything you are hoping it to be! Blessings, Shirley