This summer the cicadas are back, they're softly buzzing in the trees right now as I am typing, out on the patio.
But right now I thinking of another summer of the past, when they weren't around. It was a summer of the black crickets, who would come out chirping cheerfully after sundown and on into the night. Their singing gently ushering the listening into sleep, not too unlike the way a summer nights shower on a metal roof will.
I'm remembering an early Friday evening. It was that 'magic hour', the one that artists and photographers particularly favor, because the lowering bright suns light makes the shadows their longest, and the contrast of light and dark is very striking and sharp. When you see it, you know it.
Standing on the freshly swept sidewalk, my shadow stretched out before me, making me look 10 ft. tall with it's extraordinary length. I wasn't that tall but I felt close to it, after a productive afternoon of mowing, weeding and edging the lawn, sweeping up cut grass. The smell of the fresh cut grass......THAT is one of those things I have always looked forward to. I love that smell, and it always seems to go so well with all the other scents of summer. Even the smell of the gasoline for the mower, along with the fragrance of the neighbors roses that occasionally drifted by on the breezes.
It was a payday and I had gotten off work early. I had a small styr ofoam cooler on the porch filled with ice and more. A tall tea glass of ice water sat on the concrete beside it. Water pooled in a ring around its base, from the rivulets of condensation trickling down it's sides.
Tired with that 'good tired' you can only attain from a hard days work, I walked up to the porch and sat down on a block of tree stump I used for porch sittin'. My uncle had given it to me. Those were the days when Gran and I were still pretty poor. The patio out front had yet to be poured and the carport cover yet to be built. But it was, then, in the dreaming up stages.
The glass tried to slip out of my hand as I picked it up. I knew it would, and tightened my grasp before it could escape.
I drank in deeply the thirst slaking coolness it held and set it back down carefully in it's cool ring of water. With the same hand, now sopping wet, I wiped the back of my neck and face. I was starting to feel better already.
Thats when Gran came to the door........
(more later, on next post. I've got to charge up the laptop some more.
)
But right now I thinking of another summer of the past, when they weren't around. It was a summer of the black crickets, who would come out chirping cheerfully after sundown and on into the night. Their singing gently ushering the listening into sleep, not too unlike the way a summer nights shower on a metal roof will.
I'm remembering an early Friday evening. It was that 'magic hour', the one that artists and photographers particularly favor, because the lowering bright suns light makes the shadows their longest, and the contrast of light and dark is very striking and sharp. When you see it, you know it.
Standing on the freshly swept sidewalk, my shadow stretched out before me, making me look 10 ft. tall with it's extraordinary length. I wasn't that tall but I felt close to it, after a productive afternoon of mowing, weeding and edging the lawn, sweeping up cut grass. The smell of the fresh cut grass......THAT is one of those things I have always looked forward to. I love that smell, and it always seems to go so well with all the other scents of summer. Even the smell of the gasoline for the mower, along with the fragrance of the neighbors roses that occasionally drifted by on the breezes.
It was a payday and I had gotten off work early. I had a small styr ofoam cooler on the porch filled with ice and more. A tall tea glass of ice water sat on the concrete beside it. Water pooled in a ring around its base, from the rivulets of condensation trickling down it's sides.
Tired with that 'good tired' you can only attain from a hard days work, I walked up to the porch and sat down on a block of tree stump I used for porch sittin'. My uncle had given it to me. Those were the days when Gran and I were still pretty poor. The patio out front had yet to be poured and the carport cover yet to be built. But it was, then, in the dreaming up stages.
The glass tried to slip out of my hand as I picked it up. I knew it would, and tightened my grasp before it could escape.
I drank in deeply the thirst slaking coolness it held and set it back down carefully in it's cool ring of water. With the same hand, now sopping wet, I wiped the back of my neck and face. I was starting to feel better already.
Thats when Gran came to the door........
(more later, on next post. I've got to charge up the laptop some more.
)
