…seasons in the sun.
“Waiter, I’ll have one of those… now, please!” (a season in the sun, that is; not to be demanding or anything).
This month, the “Where Bloggers Live” crew is discussing “Favorite Seasons”… Well…they WILL be….next Friday. But, mine went live today because I can’t read a calendar…AND…
At this very moment I am in the middle of my least favorite season, cold and flu season. (Cue the tiny violins.) I’m expected to pull through, but am cranky, feverish, achy, stuffy, drippy. Also, I think I just left one of my lungs on the kitchen floor.
And that concludes my pity party.
Y’all know I’m a summer girl, hands down. I love the sun, warm breezes, digging in dirt, walking the yard every morning, bird song, butterflies, color in the yard…
…mowing the lawn, the rustle of the leaves when they return, surprise visitors…
…no muddy paws because our yard is finally dry, a hiatus from indoor home improvements to enjoy outdoor home improvements, visiting restaurants on the water, and pool time.
Yeah, I’m ready…and where is that waiter? I placed my order four paragraphs ago!
We had a warmer than normal winter this year and enjoyed many more days of fake spring than usual. Birds came back early, there were robin sightings in FEBRUARY, the grass began to green and the brush began to leaf.
I greatly appreciated this year’s fake springs. They are days of hope that gray skies will clear and summer will return. And even when fake springs give way to real spring, and the random snow and annual ice storm occurs, I can live with that…because I know summer is coming.
Real spring is nature’s reminder for me to finish indoor projects so I can get outside in May, when summer begins. What? Summer begins in June, you say? Listen, honey, I make my own calendar and summer starts May 1st.
Absolutely, May 1 is the beginning of summer.
Fall is beautiful but depressing, because it means the end of summer. Also, can you even trust a season that goes by two different names? And those cozy sweater, pumpkin latte weirdos–jumping the gun with their “It’s Fall, Y’all” in August–can keep their charming, crisp air nonsense the heck out of my summer. (Wow, that was aggressive. Sorry, I said I was cranky.) Can’t we just enjoy late summer?
If so, I’d be willing to conclude my summer at the end of September like a normal person.
(Full disclosure, I am one of those weirdos when it comes to Christmas decorating…but not the kind who has it all put away by New Year’s. Just the kind that pretends I don’t light the inside decorations before Thanksgiving…).
I do like our winters here in the Buffalo area. But winter in Buffalo doesn’t often follow the calendar either. Winter is an overachiever who likes to kick things off a little early and overstays its welcome.
In 2006, winter jumped the gun, cheated the pumpkin latte crowd out of fall’s best month, and left a plurality of trees in our area looking like refugees from a Dr. Seuss book.
About two feet of wet, heavy snow fell in early October, when the trees still had most of their leaves. All that weight devastated them. I remember going into the back yard to the non-stop sound of branches and limbs snapping from every direction. The sky kept flashing as those limbs, branches, and trees kept bringing down power lines all over Western New York.
Photo by Derek Gee of The Buffalo News. Please click the link to see more photos…it was CRAZY
Buffalo’s seasons are never dull, and we haven’t even touched on sports seasons.
But summer…..
In case you were wondering, the waiter checked in… I can have the burger and the beer, but they haven’t had a shipment of sunny, 70 degree days in a month or so.
I guess they’re out of season.
___
SIDENOTE: Although it’s clearly not a “season,” we are directly on the Path of Totality, -ality, -ality…(that phrase requires an echo) for Monday’s Total Solar Eclipse. People are expected to visit our area for the opportunity to view the eclipse from Niagara Falls…which I admit would be pretty cool. Personally, I will watch it from our yard.
UPDATED:
It was a perfect day to view the once-in-a-lifetime event…that is, it was perfect the day before AND the perfect day after. The day OF was overcast until about an hour after it ended…and then the clouds parted and made way for the perfect evening.
But it was still pretty cool to experience it from the yard.
Please be sure to see what’s in season today with my fellow blogging pals from the monthly “Where Bloggers Live” series. And check them them out again NEXT Friday when their posts go live. Kindly check out:
Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Bettye at Fashion Schlub
Leslie at Once Upon a Time & Happily Ever After
Sally at Within a World of My Own
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Who doesn’t like to peek behind the scenes and see inside people’s homes?
The second Friday of each month is when this group of seven bloggers link up to share their workspaces,
homes, towns… or whatever our fearless leader, the fabulous Bettye, proposes.
Make sure you visit everyone to see where the magic happens!
You had me at sponge candy.
WHAAAAT?? There’s a candy I don’t know?? Although I did recently see someone reference chocolate-covered cinnamon gummy bears.
CHOCOLATE. COVERED, CINNAMON. GUMMY BEARS.
I have a new goal in life.
Sorry you’ve been under the weather. “Under the weather.” That’s a funny term.
Yeah, the eclipse seemed a little underwhelming from over here. I think we’re having one in July sometime. Never occurred to me before that everyone doesn’t see the same thing at the same time. Cuz I didn’t think.
Yeah, I’m one of those fall-lovers, but I don’t say all the THINGS. You’ll never hear me say SWEATAH WEATHAH or “it’s fall y’all,” or anything about pumpkin spice anything. I enjoy it quietly.
You don’t know sponge candy?! Actually, not entirely surprising…they do make it elsewhere but it’s definitely a Great Lakes thing. And, for me, it only works with really good chocolate. As soon as the cough started to wane I ate several pieces a day and finished almost the entire two pounds…zero regrets.
Chocolate covered cinnamon gummy bears, hmm? Intriguing…
Funny about the eclipse…I’d been seeing the maps and for some reason my brain cannot comprehend align what I know about the path of the sun with the time of the eclipse (like 3;00 here and 11:00) in Texas. It’s breaking my brain, Bettye!
Fall is pretty. A little. I greatly appreciate your respectful observance. 😘
Hope you are feeling better by now. I had a 5-week cough, 2 rounds of antibiotics, 3 nasal sprays, 2 cough medicines, an asthma medication none of which really made much difference. I was sick and then 5 weeks later, I wasn’t. Hope you are back to 110%!!
I bet summer in Buffalo is fabulous. Just the right combination of warm and cool. Your yard is always spectacular so I know you have all that it takes in a Buffalo summer to grow beautiful flowers and cultivate a green lawn. We had a deep and deadly frost in 2009, I think, that killed palm trees all over the city. The photo you shared of arborgeddon is so devastating. Hope the tree canopy soon recovers.
Went to the Dr yesterday because my ribs are sore from all the coughing and she confirmed exactly what you’ve said… 5 weeks. So I have two to go, and it supposedly ends exactly as you have written.
Buffalo does have incredible summers…we’re inching there…soooo slowly all of a sudden. And in a way that’s okay because I have one big project to finish before the weather changes.
Oh my, so sorry you’re feeling “under the weather” My daughter just moved to Alabama from Buffalo and she has horror stories about the snow. I’m personally ready for some warmer springtime weather!
Iris
Me too, Iris! Me too!
is your grandson still in Buffalo? I can see people not from here originally finding our storms abominable. Despite all our complaining about shoveling…we actually get excited when a snowstorm is en route….believe it or not!
It makes all the sense in the world that living in Buffalo, summer would have a special appeal. I am down with May and June all right, but July and August can be challengingly hot for me, even in Minnesota. Of course we are expecting it to reach 81F TOMORROW so what the heck is going on with the seasons? Ooh, this reminds me of one thing I do love about summer: it’s warm enough to run the A/C in the apartment 24/7, haha! I have a cold right now so I hear you on the illness-induced grumpiness.
Hope you’re feeling better…and that your weather is regulating. Just a few days left until May! We can make it, right?!
Phew I had the crazy notion that I might have scheduled my post for the wrong day!
But I’m glad you’re leaving those sugar and candy things alone while you’re not feeling well. Sugar is the last thing your body needs to heal!!
As for winter in Buffalo being an overachiever, that’s the same here for summer. You might not think the same thing about summer if you lived here. Which goes to show it all depends on our perspective, right?
I think we need to come visit you in the summer and you need to come visit us in the winter!!
Xoxo
Jodie
THAT sounds like an excellent plan, Miss Jodie!
My body quickly tired of the sugar respite, and did all it could to make up for the dry spell. But you’re right…and I think colds have no tolerance for chocolate.