It’s a little bit hard to believe that we’re already well over a month into summer, less than two more to go until it will be time to wave sayonara to the dry, electric nights and drowsy, blisteringly warm mornings of this season. When shorts fade into ribbed tights, popsicles become overshadowed by straight-from-the-oven pumpkin pies, and the majestic blooms of gardens everywhere are replaced by a kaleidoscopic array of tumbling, crunchy leaves.
While this current season of extremes is still underway, I’ve found myself thinking about the elements that make summer so iconic. Those things that are the July equivalent to snowmen in December or tulips come April, and which speak to nearly everyone on as a collective whole. Simple pleasures, distinct moods, sun-kissed hues, the desire to escape the heat and yet an equal longing for it to linger, its presence like a memory that makes you smile more often than frown.
Every day of summer is a wild inspiration, the long desired relief from winter’s wrath, the fiery affair before level-headed autumn blows into town. So many places, scents, hues, people, and emotions fly into my mind when I think of this season the way it was lived when I was a child. Wisteria and honeysuckle branches tangoing on the back porch, canning peaches in a kitchen that had to have verged on 110 degrees. Countless – and I do mean truly mean countless – hours spent swimming in sparkling lakes, yet somehow never tiring in the least. Whiffs of barbeque smoke rising up into the crisply parched August air, so incredibly enticing in nature that you were tempted to start gnawing on your own shirt. Walks taken with dusty feet at dusk, the breeze from indigo clouds pushing the strands of sun-streaked hair from your face. The notes from certain wonderful, brilliant songs like “Sitting on the dock of the bay” and “I heard it through the grapevine” cascading into our laps as we sat on rickety lawn chairs around the flickering, dying embers of the backyard fire pit.
The older I get, the more I realize how truly dear I hold summer, what it means to me and why these things matter. To honour the summers of both past and present, a host of elements are my Monday Muses this week. Each one is inherent to the season, but in no way cliché; beautiful as a crimson sunset and special as the first time you tried a snow cone.
{1. The Blonde on the Beam, 2. 40s swimsuit, 3. Aquamaids, Cypress Gardens, posing after a show, 4. 1960's fashion}
and the labels they once came packaged with}
{ 1. Cherry ripe, 2. Fresh Strawberries, 3. Vintage Fruit Crate Label 22, 4. When the fox cannot reach the grapes he says they are not ripe.}
{1. route 66. seligman, az. 2007., 2. Del Ray Beach Columbia (the Trailer) and Cadillac Lunch 1954, 3. Hollywood! 1956, 4. Pismo Beach, California - 1950's - from a postcard.}
{1. Happy Days, 2. Summer Time Cool..., 3. 365_263 / Roasting Marshmallows, 4. pecan craquelin, vanilla bean and flourless chocolate cake ice cream sandwiches.}
{1. osoyoos lake, 2. M A R M A L A D E . S U N S E T, 3. A Studebaker sunset, 4. The hottest day of summer so far was drawing to a close....}
{To visit an individual image, please click on the corresponding link below each collage.}
In many respects summer has evolved for me, or perhaps simply adapted as I’ve aged. Gone are the endless barefoot hours spent scorching my soles on radiator-hot sand, in their place are kisses with my love in the shade. Where once two months out of the year scarcely seemed like a heartbeat’s worth of time into which to cram scores of activities, we now find a single weekend spent soaking up the sun all it takes to send a thousand stresses fleeing from our minds.
Yet no matter my age, there are so many extraordinary things about summer that remain truly timeless, each one a gift, a reason to smile, the fuel that will get me through another harrowing Canadian January, a Muse in the truest sense of the word.
What, my dear readers, are your eternal sources of summer inspiration?
