summer – S'amusing

Blueberries, Strawberries and The End of Summer

Oh, my, have you seen the calendar? The End of Summer is in sight. Just a few more weeks of long days, brilliant sunshine and warm nights, then Fall ushers in with shorter days, fading sunlight, cooler nights and its lexicon of seasonal ‘F’ words; football, foliage and frost.

The End of Summer also means the end of one of my decadent pleasures, fresh fruit from local farms, especially
sweet, succulent strawberries and big, bold blueberries. Sliced or whole, drop a handful of these tasty morsels on a bowl of your favorite breakfast cereal (Cheerios, for me) and it’s paradise for your palate. Your lips will love you and your taste buds will tingle. How depressing, knowing the ballet in my mouth is about to ‘go dark’ until next year. End of Summer, please linger longer.

The sliced banana is a wonderful addition to my cereal concoction, and according to Wikipedia (the Internet), botanically it’s a berry. By adding a sprinkle of crushed walnuts, my bowl overflows with a cornucopia of colors and textures with the patriotic reds, whites and blues of these three fruits. But, thanks to the End of Summer’s culpable coalition with the calendar, ‘this too shall pass’, at least for the strawberries and blueberries, but not the banana.

What is it with the surviving banana? The banana seems to escape the same demise of the red and blue berries. The banana is always available and the price doesn’t fluctuate. An ‘expert’ proffered that bananas are a fast growing tree so the supply is plentiful and constant. Bananas are a healthy fruit, too, they just don’t measure up on the juicy and sweet scale, as do the others.

I’ve given up picking my own, but every season I recall the times my dad took my sister and me into the mosquito infested brush where wild blueberries thrived. We ate more than we bucketed, but had plenty for a pie, or two. My wife and I often took our kids strawberry picking in the hot sun of local fields where we competed with bees for the biggest berries we could find. What lasting memories these ‘pickin’ times made.

At this moment, the bountiful strawberries and blueberries are disappearing from grocers’ shelves and I find it fruitless to complain. After all, it is a natural change, as the seasons dictate the bounty of the produce we enjoy. Besides, the End of Summer will reward our patience with the start of the apple season. And a good apple will push the strawberries and blueberries to the farthest corner of my mind.

For now, I’ll turn to the iron filled shriveled raisin and its lookalike cousin, the craisin, for my cereal topping. And I must make time to travel south into New York’s wine country along the Finger Lakes to enjoy a unique local treat, grape pie.

End of Summer, after all is said and done, you and Mother Nature are treating us quite nicely.

The Garden and The Gardener

“It’s summertime and the livin’ is easy…”, lyricized the song writer George Gershwin. He must not have been a gardener.

Up and down our Meadowbrook streets, summer gardens are coming into full bloom and it’s not because the gardeners are taking it easy. Soiled fingernails, calloused knees and aching muscles are testimony to the truism that gardeners love getting down and dirty.

My wife is a passionate gardener, one of many in our floral neighborhood. She does her part to make our parcel of land attractive, adding plants to every corner and contour where grass doesn’t grow, enhancing the beauty of our surroundings.

Fanciful colors dot our landscape: passionate pinks, plum purples, baby blues, ravenous reds and a potpourri of whites. Whimsical names like quick fire, limelight, pink diamonds, twist and shout and pinky winky, fill the pages of her ‘green thumb’ notebook.

From spring to fall, there is constant change in our yard. Colors morph from whites to pinks to browns, as plants begin their preparation for dormancy. Even those browns are beautiful, before the petals succumb to Nature and fall reluctantly to the ground.

Brisk winds will undress the heartiest of foliage at season’s end, leaving naked limbs pruned and shaped to perfection. Plants, even tall ones, will disappear under winter blankets. Our patience, once again, will be tested, as the long wait for spring emergence begins.

Gardening is hard work: planting and pruning, watering, weeding and waiting. I’m not a good gardener. I grumble too much about most everything associated with gardening: too many plants, wrong spot, time-consuming, too costly. But I enjoy looking at the results of someone else’s efforts.

From a window, I watch my wife and her helper dig, trim, mulch, water, talk and laugh. I guess the talking and laughing is a byproduct of gardening. It’s good she has a helper, I would make it stressful.

She moves among the plants with maternal instinct, straightening, cleaning, feeding, watching them mature, talking to them tenderly, giving encouragement and support. “You can do this. You can grow and be beautiful!”

Gardening is such a fundamental activity, so natural. It reveals the creativity and strength of the gardener, herself. The garden brings joy to my wife and love to our home. Every household needs a garden. We have several, thanks to my wife and her hard work. I’m a lucky guy.

srbottch

‘Sometimes, I Like Summer Better…’

“Sometimes I wonder whether I like summer better, or winter better. Usually it is when it is NOT that season, that I like it most.” (Darcy)

The town clock flashed a negative 3 bone chilling Farenheit degrees, as I stood numb at my school crossing post in January. Another western New York winter arrived with a vengeance. I wiggled my toes in desperation, confirming I still had them, and thinking, “I can’t wait for Summer”!

February found me chopping icicles off my house gutters, champion size icicles, easily 10 pounds, wishing they were large mouth bass. An avalanche of snow slid off the roof, smacking me squarely in the face while I mumbled, “I can’t wait for Summer”, and felt the watery intruder melting down my neck.

Trucks plowed heavy March snows from neighbors’ driveways, while wind gusts boomeranged it back at me as I labored with my own heavy snowblower. I uncurled my frozen fingers, one by one, from the icy grips of the obtrusive machine, and beneath a thick wool scarf wrapped around my face like an entombed mummy, I cursed the forecast and screamed in muffled frustration, “I can’t wait for Summer”!

It’s July and the humidity is oppressive. Mid summer in western New York means muggy days and restless nights. A frosty winter breeze would feel so refreshing but the calendar gives me no solace. “How soon to Winter”?

Wasn’t it just yesterday that I mowed the grass? Yet, there it lays, waiting for another clipping. Is there no end to summer’s workload? Safety glasses! Earplugs! Industrial yard machines cranking up the descibles! I yearn for the peaceful whisper of a powdery snowfall. “How soon to Winter”?

An evening stroll through our garden on a warm August night demands a healthy dose of insect repellant. Even then, in a struggle for survival, the stronger mosquitoes find unprotected spots on my arms and legs to draw my precious blood. A winter frost would be my ally in this ongoing battle between bug and body. Desperately, I cry out to Mother Nature, “How soon to Winter”?

I’m comforted to know Fall is just around the corner. It’s my favorite season, you know, except for the ragweed and golden rod, of course. And, yes, it’s followed too closely by winter,with its long, cold, black nights and grey, bone chilling days…

Well, there’s always Spring…

srbottch

Today, I Was a Kid, Again

What an amazing place, Seabreeze Amusement Park*, where you can feel young, be entertained, exhilarated, energized and exhausted. I hadn’t been to Seabreeze in 25 years and now I’ve been twice in 3 weeks, thanks to my wife’s insistence.

Braving the Jack Rabbit and Bobsled roller coasters, surrounded by hordes of screaming kids with their arms skyward as we ascended and descended steep inclines, was like visiting the mythical fountain of youth. This senior citizen felt like a kid, again.

Flume Pants

Getting drenched on the Flume was like splashing in a giant puddle, but it helped take an edge off the hot, sunny day. Who cared if you looked as though you just wet your pants? No one knew if you soaked yourself from fright, sliding down the steep falls, or just from the splash when you landed, maybe both. We wore the giant wet spot on our bottoms like a badge of honor, blending in with everyone on that ride, young and old, proudly parading around the park while drying our pants in the sun

Watching little kids on their tiny rides took us back to our days as young parents, ourselves, when we introduced our children to fun rides at this American pastime we call amusement parks. Enjoying them, we could easily see our two kids in the brightly colored ‘speed boats’, the ‘fighter rocket planes’ armed with front and rear guns, the ‘spinning teacups’ and ‘speedy’ convertible hot rod cars.

The encouraging calls of excited parents added to the kids’ thrills. Refrains of ‘again, again’ made me see our own children zipping from ride to ride, and, like a time machine in my mind’s eye, watching them grow again from dependant children to young adults, when they chose the scarier rides and thrills themselves. It was wonderful.

My wife, the adventurous type, urged me to take her to Seabreeze to ride the Jack Rabbit wooden coaster. I’m glad she did. We’ll do it again this year and every year. I might even get brave enough to venture on the WhirlWind, a ride that takes you on the ups, downs, twist and turns while spinning you in your seat. Then again…well, I’ll have all winter to think about it. And in Rochester, NY, that can be a lonnnnggg time!

*Charlotte, NY

I wrote this a couple of years ago but Seabreeze Park is now a regular stop in the summer. I still haven’t ridden the ‘Twirly Bird’!

Dedicated to my wife for her enthusiasm and youthful exhuberance