June Musings

Rain.

We have had a lot of rain this spring. Almost every day, there has been at least a rain shower. Some days, it has poured.

It is nearly the middle of June, and it is still cool and wet.

The upside of this, of course, is that everything is lush. The tree branches are so full of big green leaves, that they nearly touch the ground. The grass is thick and green. There are no brown spots or areas bare of grass in the lawn.

The downside here is that a wet spring means millions of mosquitoes are just waiting to hatch out and begin their radar-enhanced search for human blood. There will soon be a high-pitched whine in the air as they take off looking for dinner.

It is also difficult to get the lawn work done. It is hard to find time to mow in between all of the rainy days. By the time there is a chance to mow, the grass is nearly knee-high. It is the same for gardening. The flowers are getting a lot of water, but not much warm sunlight. The weeds don’t seem to care, they flourish in this wet weather. I am going to have a long day of weeding and trimming whenever I can get out there to fight the weeds and the bugs.

During the winter months, I longed for green. I craved the colors of flowers. The black and white world of January and February bore my retinas. Now, the rods and cones in the back of my eyes shiver with the abundance of colors and shades of green which surround me.

The summer continues to be busy. Almost every square on the kitchen calendar is filled in with the scribbles of an activity of some sort. Weddings, dinner with friends, weekend visits with the granddaughters. We traveled two hours last weekend to see the granddaughters’ 10 minutes of dancing in a 3-hour ballet recital last weekend. It was worth it. They were sweet and wonderful.

This season passes so quickly. It is sometimes hard to enjoy the sweetness of a summer. I want to bottle it up to shake out just a bit here and there in January. Just a shake and the smell of fresh-mown grass to offset the stale closeness of a cold, gray day would do wonders for the psyche.

This evening the rain appears to have dissipated for at least a while. The forecast calls for some warmth this weekend, interspersed with thunderstorms. The granddaughters will be here to visit. Hopefully, they will be able to get outdoors with us. We have bicycles, swing and sandbox ready to go. The river will be high, the woods tick-filled, and the grass long and lush.

Life is pretty darned good. It is summer.

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