Thursday, June 11, 2009

Ah Summertime and the living is easy

Whoever wrote that line must not have lived on a farm.

Well, it's a good thing I'm tired and bored. Too tired to make or post jewelry and bored so I decided to check my blog. I've actually been thinking about posting an entry and now I have to because I got tagged. I'll be expressing my thoughts about Summer. I'm going to talk about memories that I have of Summer as a child. I just realized that as an adult I have not given my children many consistent memories of summer. I now live in town and the schedule you have is so different to that of being on a farm.

June, what does the month of June evoke in my memories-strawberries, mmmm. Growing up on a farm with my grandparents who always planted a huge field of strawberries and sold them in June. Warm, thunderstorms-yikes, my mother's birthday, my parents anniversary and my son's birthday, not to mention Father's day. June is a busy month. We also have an arts festival every year in our town. We try to make it to several of the exhibits each year.

July, Fireworks-who cannot mention July without thinking about fireworks? Next in my memory would be blackberries, raspberries, ice cream, lightning bugs and heat. We always made homemade ice cream in July. I have an ice cream maker and have yet to start this tradition with my children. I need to get busy, they are growing up fast. July has to be on of the hottest months in the year. Heat so hot that you feel tired before noon and don't want to move for the rest of the day until evening and then you just want to slowly crawl in bed. When I was a child July was the month to go to the lake and splash in the creek. The heat never seemed to bother me.

August, Huckleberries, grapes, thunderstorms, and back to school. When I was a little girl we always went to the mountains to pick what my grandparents called huckleberries. They are smaller and tarter than blueberries and grow wild up on the mountains here in the Appalachians. The bushes are much larger than blueberries. We would leave at about 5:00 in the morning and pick until 12:00. I don't ever remember picking past that because of the heat. In the afternoon we would wash them and get them ready for canning. Not so long ago when my oldest child was a toddler I use to pick the grapes off of the vine in our back yard and make homemade grape juice. The vine has had some sort of rot on it for about 5 to 6 years and the yield is very poor. I haven't canned grape juice in a long time. One of my fondest memories is of her running around the back yard saying I want bates for grapes. Thunderstorms- I dread the summer storms. I'm abnormally afraid of storms due to being struck by lighting as a child. I was washing dishes and the lighting struck a tree whose roots where wrapped around the plumbing to our sink. It ran into the house and blew the sink into pieces, knock me out and across the kitchen. I don't remember anything about it except seeing a very bright light and the tree outside our kitchen window. Back to school-Even though we home school the schedule does lighten a bit over the summer. As an only child that went to the public school-August was my lifeline socially. It was the month that I finally got to see my friends and get back to learning and reading books. Growing up on a farm was very fun but my grandparents and mother did not read very much and the library was something for town folk. Reading anything but the Bible was not encouraged. We had so much work to do for our daily existence that reading seemed a waste of time unless it had to do with something very practical like a how to guide. T.V. was never watched. School was a welcomed relief from all the hard work on the farm.

September-pears and the cooler nights make me very excited about the Fall that is to come. Spiders and webs in the morning dew. Cooler days that are a welcome and the longing for snow to get here. Excited that anther season is about to approach and glad that the hard work of summer is slowing down. My favorite thing about September is that the pears are getting ripe and that I can make pear pie.

Well that's my summertime fun for now. I really do like summer even the heat. I am so blessed to live in a place that has all the four seasons.

Most memorable day so far was just this week. We went to some friends house and rode the golf cart and four wheeler around their property. Petted and chased their miniature goats and horses. Waded in the pond on their property and tried to catch fish with these little nets.-Got my first sunburn of the summer. To sound like my children-It was a totally awesome day!!!!!

Favorite food of summer-there are so many to mention. Cold stuff! Fresh tomatoes, ice cream, fruit. Watermelon has to be my favorite.

1 comment:

Argentia Krystofel said...

Ah, I forgot Monday, for some reason. It was a totally awesome day, as you said we would say. Thanks for doing the tag! Now back to writing Exo-Force fanfics late at night. :P You know your daughter, always up late on the computer!
i♥u,
-Autumn