Labor Day is over, which probably means summer is, too. The last week and a half have been cloudy and cool here. I’ve been closing the windows at night. Things are changing.
I don’t want to say that. I always have a slight temper tantrum at the end of summer, kicking and screaming my way into fall just until I breathe the first lungful of burnt leaf crockpot cooking incense fresh breeze. Then the fight goes out of me.
This summer was my first in Washington and it felt sun-dappled and too short. This summer was walks by the canal and Green Lake, huge hashbrowned omelets at Beth’s afterwards. This summer held weeks of cherries, all sweet, and one generous quart of sour pie cherries, which I should have horded more carefully. Maybe, as the name implies, you’re supposed to put them in a pie, but mine never made it that far. I ate them by the handful. Ditto peaches, which, until the last month, never made it further than the kitchen sink where I stood slurping, with juice running down my chin. Then, two weeks ago, I made peach buttermilk ice cream. With cinnamon. And pecans. And bourbon.
This summer, I figured out how to deal with fava beans, because they grow here. Ditto nettles, morel mushrooms, fiddleheads, huckleberries, and dragon’s tongue beans. It’s likely that many of these things grow in Minnesota too, but less prominently. Everyone in the Pacific Northwest seems to be an artisan of some food creation, so the more quirky the produce, the better.
This summer was drinking wine on Vashon Island, kicking around Port Townsend with no agenda whatsoever. It was writing on Whidbey and starting my second semester of school. I enjoyed feeling like I knew what I was doing this second time around, maybe, possibly, like a real grad student.
This summer was showing my friends and family around Seattle, walking the hills of my neighborhood, trying to get a job. Not getting one, and having multiple opportunities flounder. (I may write these up in future posts, if I can muster the energy.)
Now that it is almost over, what did this summer feel like to you?
Blind inFlight 
I drank the wine I got on vashion.it was good but not as good as when we tasted it. Must have been your company!
Summer feels lazy, like clouds that float slowly across the sky. It sounds coarse, like frogs croaking by the lake, water crashing on the shore, and heat of the day thunder booming around you. It feels sticky, then cool, as you make the porch sofa into a bed, to feel the summer evening breeze while you listen to the hooting owls, and crickets, a cicada’s. If feels content, with children home for the summer, and special meals made. It’s warm in my heart as I hear giggling voices raised in unison over some secret funny event. It is sleeping late, splashing in the ocean, following dolphins, stinging jellyfish, then the smell of vinegar. It tastes like grouper and shrimp, and pinot grigio. It feels lazy, content, and warm.