An Old-Fashioned Summer

There’s something about this summer that transports me back through the years to my childhood when the days were hot and dry, the evenings cool and the morning dew welcomed our bare toes when my sister and I went outside to feed our pet rabbits. 

This old-fashioned summer could not have been timelier after the icy, cold winter of 2013/14 that seemed to drag on forever. I told myself in the early spring, which never really arrived, that I would not complain about the usual humidity and endless days and nights of enduring a sealed house with the air-conditioner running constantly. In fact, there’s been nothing to complain about. Mother Nature has taken pity on us and blessed us with the perfect summer.

The temperatures are well under 30 degrees Celsius, the cool mornings require a light sweater while walking the dog and the nights with windows thrown open to accept a gentle breeze remind me of summers past. Ice-cream cones were a dime, no one wore sunscreen and Toronto didn’t have a baseball team.

 The summer of 2012 was the third hottest summer on record and we have come to accept the steamy Julys and Augusts of the twenty-first century. Weather disasters have tripled since the 1960s. Thunder storms, floods and tornadoes are all too common.

Do you remember, back in the day, when we lived in small houses on large lots? Now we live in large houses on small lots and our fathers and husbands complain about cutting grass. In the early 1960s, every weekend without fail, my father cut the front and back lawn of a huge lot in Willowdale and trimmed two hedges that were six-feet high on either side of the property. I used to love trailing after him, inhaling the fresh cut grass. He used a push mower—not electric or gas, which brings me to a common complaint. Summers are not as quiet as they used to be. I wish everyone would get together and mow the lawn at the same time Friday evenings, leaving the rest of the weekend a silent bliss.

My apologies, dear friends, I did say I wouldn’t complain about this summer, but I meant the weather. We no longer have the cottage in Muskoka. How I miss waking up in the sleeping porch to the smell of pine, the chatter of chipmunks and the call of loons on the lake drifting through the window screens.

Presently, the cicadas are singing, the lawn mowers are silent. I will sit outside with a book and sip iced tea and thank Mother Nature for her sweet offerings.