Summer Flickers

Today is the first day of school for our public school students.  I was just feeling like I'm getting settled into summer, and now it's over.

Of course, it isn't really over, at least not in terms of weather.  As if to remind us, yesterday was one of those ferociously hot days, with a heat index of 110 and no breeze.  As I walked across the church parking lot, I could swear I felt the asphalt oozing.  We hid in the house all afternoon--it was just too intense to go outside.

Happily, we so rarely experience that here.  It's usually 92 or so, with lower humidity than the rest of the South, and a good breeze from the east.  Record breaking heat is in the 96 degree range.

Until we moved here, I lived in places that routinely had a stretch of days where the temperature was 105 or higher.  And that's the actual temperature, not the heat index.  So summers here feel surprisingly temperate.

Yes, I do miss autumn.  But even if I lived in other places, mid-August is still hot.  Children would troop off to school in heat that didn't match the action.

Let me make a list of the summer things that I should be sure to do before the season slips away entirely:

--eat more watermelon.

--eat other kinds of melons.

--take some evening walks around the neighborhood so that I can notice the light changing as we move towards the autumnal equinox.

--I haven't had any corn on the cob!  How can this be?

--Should I make homemade ice cream?

--Perhaps an outdoor concert?

I wish we had fireflies here.  I wouldn't catch them and put them in a jar, the way I would have as a child.  But it would be neat to watch them flicker.