A cool breeze

I know that the passage of time seems to accelerate as we get older but this year our summer really was cut short with that cool breeze of autumn. I am sure any day now the birds will start their pilgrimage south. Here we are barely at the end of August and already the ground has cooled and the chill is back in the morning. I am desperately hoping we will be able to eke out a few more days for sitting on the deck before we pack it all in for another year. I am mourning the end of summer.

Those of you who are regular readers of this column will have noticed that we did not have a submission last week. I am sorry for leaving you hanging, but you see it was the one week I had company come to town and between cramming in some time to enjoy with them and attempting to finish out the summer chores before the rain took over… well, there just wasn’t any more time (or energy) left for anything else – except for work, which just seems to be a nuisance, especially in the summer, don’t you think? I mean really, when you have to organize a leisurely breakfast, daytime activities for various age groups, cocktails and appies on the deck, multi-course dinners that feature our wondrous Okanagan bounty and then scintillating late-night conversation with a delectable treat to cap the evening off – how do you possibly arrange to work with all that to do?

Well, there wasn’t much sleeping going on but I did thoroughly enjoy catching up with family and seeing a new generation of kids forge relationships which I hope will last as long as mine with their parents. Perhaps decades from now they will be sitting on a deck in the Okanagan reminiscing as we did I can only hope. And the beets I put up from the garden will make great gifts this weekend for our friends in Calgary, so that was time well spent. Life is indeed short, but you can actually pack a lot in if you want to!

This weekend is time for just the two of us… and a bunch of die-hard barbecuers from around the continent. Martin is going for the gold at “BBQ on the Bow” in Calgary, so I hope you will wish him luck. I am there just as moral support – I just can’t consume enough meat in a weekend to be called a serious “ba-becue” fan! I know I will have him to myself when we get into the Rockies on our mushroom-picking hike, and that is just fine by me. If it has to be autumn, then in the forest with the mushrooms and the streams and that cool breeze is the place to be.

I hope you had a great summer, and that the kids are ready for school. Take some time to store away those dog day memories before you start to unpack the school supplies and sweaters again. That way you can pull them out on a dreary day when you need them, and you will feel the heat just the way the birds do when they arrive at their winter getaway.

Kristin

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.