Someone’s knocking on the door…

…and I think it’s Summer!

It’s Friday!!!

Even though we’ve had 11 straight Saturdays with rain and tomorrow’s forecast is dodgy at best, the sun is shine right now and this week has filled me with great hope for better weather to come. Sunny days. Warmer temps. It’s starting to feel like Summer.

The yard is showing signs of my favorite season, and some of the things that stand out are:

• How green the grass is (though if we’re not careful it’ll brown on us!).

• Seasonal flowers are blooming.

• The patio is (temporarily) clear of pollen and the furniture is ready to be lounged upon.

• The veggie garden beds and all the flowerpots/holders have been planted. Some time each day is spent tending those (and trying to win the war against garden vermin with relative but not complete success). Funny story: all these years I’ve been talking about the stoop pots, you know the giant pots that I put on the front stoop? Kerri thought I was saying “stew pots.” 🤣🤣🤣

• We opened the pool at the beginning of May and after years of back and forth (punctuated by many long pauses) we *finally* got the surface crack/blemish/missing chunk repaired last Friday. The patch looks amazing (he said we’d be able to see it if we looked for it but it’s really hard to find—yay!) and the water’s warming up fast (almost 75°). In fact I took my first swim yesterday after sweating my ass off doing yard work. I was going to go for a walk when I was done but it was so hot and I just hopped into the pool in my shorts and tee. In the olden days, I’d have quickly and discreetly stripped and swam au naturel, but since the neighbors cut down those bushes and raised their deck….it’s just too risky to be risqué. Especially at my age. 🤣🤣🤣 It felt great—I need to get the floats ready to be floated on now, once the forecasted rain passes.

• Last night I had my mom over for dinner after her outdoor tai chi class and we sat out back, drank nice chilled rosé, cooked on the grill, and watched the breaking news of the 🐓🌮🤡’s schoolgirl battle with Elon…breakups are hard!!! But it was so nice spending an evening on the patio.

Random yard scenes:

Prairie life…da beds!

Patio planters!

Scarlet begonias in memory of Uncle Bob.

The pool, patched. (We got the lights fixed too so the evening ambiance is 🔥🔥🔥. And yes, while they were at it, we had them do a full pool electrical inspection for general safety reasons.)

Another sign of Summer? Things along the Esker are vivid green.

Pretty pretty pretty green…right?

And another? It’s staying light pretty late. Like I don’t even *really* need my glasses to drive home after pickleball on Tuesday nights. But I wear them anyway, because I have passengers in the car. 🤣

And lastly? Yesterday I cleaned the filters for the mini splits, dusted out the units, and fired up the air conditioning—it’s cool and dry inside now. What’s the point of having AC and then being a hero and suffering through sweaty days and even sweatier nights???

Anyway, there’s not shortage of positive signs of the season.

Plus it’s a party time of year—graduations, birthdays, etc. Celebrations galore.

Nothing like a little Richardson Farms cookie dough ice cream in a dish to make one’s graduation partying heart happy.

I hope signs of Summer are appearing around you and that they are making your heart happy on this Feel-Good Friday.

Thanks for being here and thanks for your continued support—it means more than you know!

Love you too.

So the audio accompaniment habit is developing and the only thing I have to say about it so far is that it gets easier every time—and there’s a lesson in there about repetition and feeling comfortable and having the starting goal being to just do it, without worrying about perfection or what other people think or anything, really, other than getting it done. I’m committed to doing it and to improving it each week. If you have fun with it, more the better.

Happy Friday.

Really. Love you too!