Seasons, Full Circle

Monday, July 11, 2005

Ahhhhhhhh, summer, it is most definately here. I do so love summer. All the green foilage, all the bugs, all the birds, the bright hot sun and the wonderfully warm breeze that whispers through my hair as I sit in the shade. Barbecues, sitting out on the deck eating dinners, swimming, water fights, smelly flowers with such vibrant colors, sunburn, walks......screeeeeeeech.

Ok, now really. I do enjoy summer. I enjoy all seasons actually. But I don't know if anyone can relate to this or not but the incredibly blistering hot humid days. 95 degree days. Oh, I just feel like I am suffering at times. Maybe if the humidity wasn't so high it would be more bearable but man, I tell ya, it is very draining on the energy.

We don't have air conditioning in our house so we have about 7 fans running throughout the house day and night. But that warm air just keeps getting circulated around and around and around. Sweat surfaces throughout the day and when I go into my freezer to find something to make for breakfast or lunch or even dinner, all I want to do is climb inside and hibernate for about 3 hours.

We have a pool in our backyard but the deer flies are so bad and I tend to be allergic to them and swell up bad everytime I get bit, which leads me to take benedryl which knocks me on my butt, only to find myself waking up in a pool of sweat. Sounds gross but is our life.

As I have said, I do so love summer but could do without the heat after about 5 days. 85 degrees is a perfect day for me. I have a wonderful tan again, I no longer damage the retina of another looking at my white winter skin and feel healthier than ever. But on these hot, hot days, I long for a pile of snow. One in which to roll around in just to cool off if only for 5 minutes.

Then I think of winter, the gloomy, overcast, bitter cold days. That loooong season tends to drag on for what seems like forever and again I am grateful for this heat. I do like winter actually. It is so beautiful when we get one of those heavy wet snowfalls. The tree branches are stressed with the weight of the snow throughout the woods in our back yard. White engulfs everything with the little hint of tree bark peeking through. The evergreens sag with the white and the contrast that is visible is absolutely breathtaking. A quick drive brings us to the St. Croix River Valley with the bluffs sparsely covered here and there with snow, chunks of ice floating through the Dalles. Oh, it almost makes me cold just thinking about it. These are the days my kids are out building snowmen, forts and having snowball fights.

What I find most intriguing about these days though is there always seems to be the presence of a low, droning bitter breeze. Each time old man winter takes a breath, little chunks of snow fall off of the trees. The old man usually takes about 3-4 hours to complete the bathing of the trees. Then it is just back to one of those white, cold bitter winter days again. In order to see the chunks of snow falling to the ground, one must be up by at least 7:00am. I am usually up much earlier, showered, ready to face the day.

On these days, I have to get up earlier to shovel the sidewalk and salt so that my daycare families don't plummet to their deaths, but before and after I finish the shoveling, I stand on my deck and listen to the silence with the occasional 'clunk' of snow falling off the trees. Sound is so dead in the winter, silence is so loud. Winter mornings are something I truly treasure living in the midwest. I don't get cold, I don't shiver, I simply stand there with my steaming cup of coffee, my cigarette in my gloved hand and breath in the fresh crisp air along with the smell of 'folgers in my cup.'

Fall and spring are like foreplay. I love the fall with all the colors and the smell of dried out leaves. The preparations for the winter can get a little mundane but around my oldest daughters birthday are when the colors peak in our area.

I am out with my camera year after year taking pictures of the same landscape laughing because all the tourists came to see the peak colors but they seem to always peak in the middle of a week, never on the weekend. With that said, I have the park, the scenic overlook, and most importantly the roads to myself. It is very nice actually.
Spring, well, life starts to revive not only outside but inside as well. Water hoses creep out to clean all the mud off of things, wash the vehicles. The garden claw comes out to prepare my gardens for the coming summer. The rakes come out to clean up the yellowed grass of all the leaves and sticks that fell over the fall and winter, garbage bags appear to clean up all the corn stalks andother debris that has blown into our yard from the field across the street. Dead mice heads start to appear from my cats hunting, and that familiar wet spongy smell emerges with all the rain that feeds the foilage.

And here I sit, at my computer on an 85 degree night, writing about the full circle that complete the seasons of our life.

Written by louie0768 .