Why I Love Summer

Shortly after I burned up the blender making milk shakes for Teen Angel’s post wisdom tooth extraction last night, I looked out the patio doors and saw the beginnings of what I thought might be a beautiful sunset in the making. I’ve been too busy to chase sunsets in recent weeks. The upside to that is that I haven’t had any chigger bites this summer since I haven’t been sitting in the weeds. The downside is that I’ve missed some really pretty sunsets.


I grabbed my camera, slid on my ratty old flip flops sitting by the back door and hopped on the golf cart. I zipped to the back of the subdivision where a lovely little lake sits on private property. It’s a great place to take pictures, and the owner doesn’t mind if you park along the edge and take in the view. I laughed when I pulled in because one of my neighbors had already beaten me there. She stops there regularly for sunset pictures, and posts beautiful photos on Facebook all of the time.

“You got here at just the right time,” she shouted. “Good,” I replied and got into position. The neighborhood dogs jumped and splashed around us while Shirley and I clicked away and chatted, without looking away from our viewfinders, about family and work. A gorgeous sunset blazed across the sky, wowing us with its oranges and purples. “Look at it!” “Ooh, isn’t it great?” “It’s better than I expected!” And on and on until the sky faded into a blue that turned to dusk very quickly. The show was better than we had anticipated.

I had forgotten how much I enjoy photographing sunsets and trying to catch that perfect shot while the light rapidly changes. It was great to share it with someone who feels the same. When it finally got too dark to shoot, Shirley pedaled her bicycle along the golf cart’s headlights, while we headed home and chatted some more. As I waved goodbye and drove through the breeze, I saw the flashes of fireflies and heard the musical sound of children’s laughter in the night air.

At home, Hubby and the dog were in the front yard, so they hopped on and we rode around the subdivision for a little while, enjoying the break from the day’s busy-ness. Again, there was laughter from neighborhood kids, and I was taken back to a time some forty years ago when I ran barefoot through cool grass with a jar full of lightning bugs and played games like tag and hide and seek until bedtime. Memories of evenings spent chasing cousins, eating watermelon or twirling hot sparklers. And falling asleep with the knowledge that tomorrow would bring another day of delicious vacation.

It was a wonderful time-out in a hectic day. It probably lasted only about forty minutes, but it seemed like a couple of hours. I went inside the house feeling very satisfied with life and a little disappointed that this grownup couldn’t stay up late because of work the next day. For just a little while last night I forgot about chores that needed to be done and simply enjoyed the beauty of a sinking sun, warm breezes and the simple sounds of carefree children at play. It is the song of summer, and it plays in my heart like a fine concerto.

A few Miles From my House

The little cemetery sits on a hill, tucked off the main road as if it’s shyly hiding from the gaze of passersby. If you didn’t know it was there, you might not notice it. It rests in the shade of tall oaks and scrub pine, with small streams of sunlight boring through the branches and kissing the tops of stones. Flowers withered by winter's wrath dot the landscape.

The cemetery is old. Many of the dead resting there saw the turn of the last century, fought in the Spanish American War or lived through the Great Depression. Some newer stones mark the graves of the recent dead. A baby. A soldier. A mother. Someone’s grandfather. It is a quiet place, within a stone’s throw of a barn and a few old farmhouses.

Barbed wire keeps out the horses and makes a rambling, sharp boundary along the cemetery’s perimeter.

It’s a humble place, never calling attention to itself and yet, boldly displaying the life and love of the people buried there. There are markers with pictures of the dead. A stone adorned with a weathered floral arrangement and a handwritten note with faded sentiments. The words are so personal they make you turn away, embarrassed to have seen the inside of someone’s grieving heart. There are markers made of hand poured and lettered concrete and others made with even simpler materials.

They speak to the poverty of those left behind. And they make you sad.

Everywhere you look; there are personal touches, some that leave you wondering why they were placed there.

And for whom.

It is in that little country graveyard that I sat and watched the sun slide into the horizon and wondered about the people who walked this land before I did and the people left behind who tend to their memory. It is a quiet place, within a stone’s throw of serenity.

So Long Summer

As the sun sets on this holiday, the unofficial end to summer, I am stunned at how fast my favorite season has flown. While I should be grateful for the cooler temperatures and beautiful foliage that's just around the corner, I am, as always, sad. No more bare feet. No more pool. No more smell of freshly cut grass. Summer is drawing to a close, and all I can think about is how long it will be until it rolls around again. Sigh.

This Too Shall Pass

First it was flowers. Then it was architecture. Now? Now, it’s sunsets. I can’t get enough of them. Every time the sun starts to drop in the sky I start snapping pictures. It’s cliché. It’s been done. It’s been overdone. And yet, I can’t help myself. It’s like biting your fingernails. You don’t even realize you’re doing it until it’s too late. Do all wannabe photographers go through this stage? I suspect they do. Bear with me, brothers and sisters, I’ll be over it soon. And then I’ll be on to something else. Like cute kids with ice cream cones and floppy hats. Or old people with weathered faces squinting into the sun. I should go ahead and warn you now. You have approximately three months until my vacation and the week you’re going to spend suffering through Florida sunsets.

Even a Blind Squirrel Finds an Acorn

I went stomping through the countryside Saturday evening taking photos. I was looking for an interesting shot to submit to a local photo contest and thought I might capture something interesting along the back roads near my home. Even though I live in a subdivision, I live in a rural part of the county, and I am surrounded by fields, streams and assorted wildlife. In fact, a wildlife refuge is about ninety seconds from my driveway by car. That was the first place I headed, with Hubby’s warning to be careful bouncing off my ears. I found a couple of decent beauty shots, but nothing grand. By the way, this kind of scene can be found regularly in this neck of the woods. I wanted something more interesting, so I drove down a two lane highway toward a little spot in the road that is more of a slightly congested area than a town. In fact, congested is an exaggeration. The busiest spot is the convenience store where you can buy a Coca Cola and a ring bologna sandwich made just the way you want it. They were closed. Otherwise, I would have snapped a few pictures at the meat counter for you. There was nothing going on around there. Not even a lazy dog lounging on a porch. So I turned back and headed down the road again, looking for a white cross I’d seen along the road earlier. It had potential for some interesting pictures, but I drove past it twice before I finally found a place I could park the car. It was about a quarter of a mile from the cross, so I started hoofing it, trying to be quick because the traffic was fast and kind of heavy for a country highway. The cross also sits near a shady biker hangout. And when I say biker hangout, I don’t mean the Harley riding, fun loving loud kind of biker who is misunderstood. I mean the racist, drug dealing kind of biker who hangs Confederate flags in the windows to hide a stash of meth and weapons. Hula didn’t want to run into any of those folks.

I highly underestimated the depth of the ditch by the cross and ending up jumping into it to get close enough for photos, praying the whole time that chiggers did not invade the legs of my shorts and that a big black snake did not slither across my feet. I snapped and snapped but just couldn’t get the kind of shot I was looking for. I finally gave up on it, but I had highly underestimated how hard it would be to get out of that ditch and had to grab onto some vegetation to crawl out, hoping that a big black snake did not slither under my chest. I headed back toward the car, disappointed because at this point I had been driving around shooting pictures for more than an hour and had turned up nothing. Two cars came zipping down the road from opposite directions and since there were no shoulders on this road I had no choice but to jump in a ditch, again hoping that a big black snake did not slither along my feet. I was up to my waist in weeds and already itching, but as I sighed and grumbled I looked up and found this:Hello God. Right in front of me was the prettiest sunset I’d seen in a long time. And I started snapping because the colors in a sunset change so fast.And while it may not win any contests, I sure got a nice prize for stumbling around in the weeds for an hour and a half.

Blue Skies

Can anyone doubt there is a God when he looks at this?

Or this? I think not.

Just a little peek at this part of the world for you.