While summer is always touted as a time for fun in the sun, our guest blogger, Rebecca Rodriguez shares a different take!

It’s here.  100+ degree weather, sunshine, and the scent of sunscreen looms heavily in every store I walk into that must have their air conditioner set below 60 degrees.  I take a sweater with me when I go to the library or shopping.  I keep it handy in my back seat.  I wonder if these places run the a/c at freezing 24/7. 

I don’t thrive in summer.  I am more the autumn type.  Sweater weather all the time suits me just fine. 

Lazy, lethargic and languid describe me during summer in central Texas. 

My beautiful green grass is gone and turned a pale yellowy color. Or is it beige? The water conservationist in my refuses to waste water on keeping the lawn green.  The grass crunches beneath my feet. Tending the garden is on hold.  Unless of course I do it after sunset. There again, who wants to work during summer?

I slow down in summer.  My world slows down.  Time slows down.  Clients must wait longer for deliverables.  My yoga students will have to wait until fall before I lead another practice.  My garden will get little attention if any from me. At least until the temperature drops below 90 degrees.  I could not handle life on Mars or the desert, Houston, or Guayaquil for that matter.  Like the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz when water touched her and she screamed as she writhed in pain, “I’m melting” I too melt during summer.   This poem, From Sunset to Star Rise by Christine Georgina Rossetti gives me comfort that I am not alone with my thoughts about summer. Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not:

Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not:
I am no summer friend, but wintry cold,
A silly sheep benighted from the fold,
A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot.
Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot,
Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold;
Lest you with me should shiver on the wold,
Athirst and hungering on a barren spot.
For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge,
I live alone, I look to die alone:
Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge,
Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back,
My heart goes sighing after swallows flown
On sometime summer’s unreturning track.

Are you a person who thrives during summer?

by Rebecca Rodriguez

Thanks Rebecca! I’m looking for the joy in every season. Just like every age has its beauty and compelling joys, I’m finding joy in sunrises and sunsets, whether they are hot and fire-y or cold and shrouded in chilling mists.

Anyone else want to share their thoughts?

© Jane F. Collen July 7, 2023 IndexCardCure™ finding joy regardless of the season