September 19, 2012

While The Garden Grows...

Usually, by this time of year my house is filled with aroma of a pumpkin pie candle, I've been sipping pumpkin spice beverages for weeks and seeking out yellow/orange leaves like a child on a scavenger hunt. This can be seen from the evidence #1, a blog post dated August 23rd, 2009 all about how I woke up and thought it was Fall.

This year I've been clinging to Summer and I couldn't quite put my finger on why. Sure, I can go the route of our summer was robbed from us in the form of daycare searching and stress, blah blah whine, blah, meh, fart.  But I don't think that's it. We squeezed in a trip to Tahoe, had s'mores, played in the sprinklers and swam in the kiddie pool in the past month. Lets be honest, that's pretty much every summer in a nutshell. So what's the deal?

Something happened and it all became clear: the sun began to set earlier.

You see, every single night, no matter what stressful things are going on in our lives we eat dinner then go outside to water the garden.

While the water soaks into the dry earth we play as a family in our front yard. The dogs run and play while Gwen chases after them yelling "run, run, run!" We laugh, we play, we dance, we hug. It is one of my favorite times of the day, when we're all relaxed and enjoying ourselves.

As we play in the front yard there are no responsibilities. The dishes are forgotten, the lunches to be packed are pushed far from our minds and we laugh and enjoy one another's company. It's as close to those wild and crazy summers I enjoyed as a child as I"m going to get.

So as the sunset comes earlier and earlier our outside play time is becoming shorter and rushed. Summer is literally slipping through our fingers and I've been digging my heels in, trying to keep it for as long as possible.



Won't you stay a month more, Summer?

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