Here comes Summer

We’re one week away from the unofficial start of summer. Next weekend is Memorial Day weekend. In stutter-steps the weather has become more summery. In another week or so we’ll be safe from frost for at least a couple or three months. Meanwhile, I continue to suffer from the delusion that I can, someday soon, get “caught up,” and then move into maintenance mode. Each time I come close, the seasons, and the seasonal chores, change and the changeover adds to the seasonal chores.

If I’m honest, the last time I really was caught up I was living by myself in a small three room apartment with my pickup and two boats, one for fishing, the other for clamming, parked in the yard. The yard was the landlord’s to mow. We were close to the Atlantic so there was rarely snow to shovel. In those days I didn’t even have a dog to care for. No wonder I had so much time to go hunting and fishing despite working a full time job.

I think I need to turn priorities topsy-turvy and treat fishing as if it were work and yard chores as something to be squeezed in between fishing excursions and reading episodes. Even if I fail, it seems like a challenge I need to try to rise to, except in winter. I don’t do ice fishing any more than I sit and watch the grass grow and, even though there are some streams open to trout fishing in the winter, I have a very strong aversion to frost bite.

can you tell a scarlet tanager from a rose-breasted grosbeak?

Photo by J. Harrington

While waiting for the AC technician today I managed to get a few things done, including some outside chores before it got really warm. Once again I’m remembering that I’m seeking progress, not perfection. At least, that’s what I keep reminding myself. Meanwhile, scarlet tanagers remain conspicuous by their absence while grosbeaks are at the feeders in abundance.

Summer

By John Clare

Come we to the summer, to the summer we will come, 

For the woods are full of bluebells and the hedges full of bloom, 

And the crow is on the oak a-building of her nest, 

And love is burning diamonds in my true lover's breast; 

She sits beneath the whitethorn a-plaiting of her hair, 

And I will to my true lover with a fond request repair; 

I will look upon her face, I will in her beauty rest, 

And lay my aching weariness upon her lovely breast. 

The clock-a-clay is creeping on the open bloom of May, 

The merry bee is trampling the pinky threads all day, 

And the chaffinch it is brooding on its grey mossy nest 

In the whitethorn bush where I will lean upon my lover's breast; 

I'll lean upon her breast and I'll whisper in her ear 

That I cannot get a wink o'sleep for thinking of my dear; 

I hunger at my meat and I daily fade away 

Like the hedge rose that is broken in the heat of the day.

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