Summertime
28/06/15 05:19
I’ve noticed that people in the Dakotas often comment about the weather, “it usually isn’t like this.” When we have a run of cold, the people say, “this is unusual weather for us.” When it gets hot, or dry, or wet, “This isn’t typical.” I guess that when we don’t happen to like the weather, it is natural to long for something different.
It was hard to argue with the weather yesterday, however. It felt like summer. The temperature got up to 90 degrees, the sun was bright, the skies were clear with just a few high white clouds. It was lovely. After several weeks of rain, we’re heading into a week with few showers in the forecast. The temperatures aren’t going to be quite as high as they were yesterday for the rest of the week, but we’re definitely in for some very pleasant weather.
I love sleeping with my windows open. Fresh air from outside always seems a bit sweeter than the air that is boxed up indoors. I like waking to the birdsong even though we’ve had a few pigeons hanging around lately. Their repetitive cooing isn’t exactly musical, but theirs isn’t the only sound outside my window.
It is a reality, however, that our neighborhood is simply more noisy than was the case a few years ago. When I came back from paddling at the lake yesterday morning, a neighbor was out mowing his lawn at 7 am. We used to have an unspoken agreement in our neighborhood that we’d wait until 9 am on Saturdays to start up lawn mowers, weed eaters, and other noisy devices. Another neighbor was still mowing at 9 pm. Neither neighbor bothered me. They didn’t disrupt my sleep. I’m not concerned about people mowing their lawns. Still, I decided to wait until 9 am before I got out my lawn mower just in case I had a neighbor who wanted to sleep in. That seemed likely because one of my neighbors was just coming in at 2:30 am the night before, with plenty of slamming car doors, loud talking and yelling at their little dog. I do sleep with my windows open, after all.
Up and down the streets there are plenty of “for sale” signs around the neighborhood, and one of the houses on our street has sold within the last week. With hints that interest rates may go up, people are scrambling to get their financing in order and purchases made. We’ve lived in the same home for twenty years and thought there are a couple of neighbors who were here when we came, most of the homes in our neighborhood have residents who don’ remember what our subdivision was like a decade or more ago. Change is inevitable, and it doesn’t do any good to complain, but I can remember before we were annexed into the city, before the development of some of the neighboring subdivisions. When we moved in, our deer hadn’t been urbanized. If you went out of doors, or even turned on a porch light, the deer ran away. These days, we have urban deer for neighbors. I can walk out to get the newspaper in the morning and the deer will lift their heads and take a look, but won’t run away, and if I stomp my foot they’ll just walk across the street and come back as soon as I go inside. That is kind of nice because we get to see the fawns earlier and more often. And deer make good neighbors. They are quiet. On the other hand they’ll try to eat almost anything you plant. Between the hail and the deer, we aren’t expecting too many flowers this year. We keep the vegetable garden fenced, but each year we seem to plant fewer vegetables and more flowering plants inside the vegetable garden.
Despite my complaints about the changes in the neighborhood, we are still very fortunate to live here. It is truly a wonderful place and the weather is varied enough to keep us from being bored and temperate enough to be comfortable most of the year. I’m not eager to live in a place where the air conditioners run around the clock. I know that most of the world’s people live in urban areas where the neighbors are much closer and the personal space is much smaller than what we enjoy. I know it must seem ludicrous to a person from Connecticut to hear a South Dakotan complain about traffic. I doubt if I have ever been delayed in my drive to or from work by more than 5 minutes in the past 20 years. There aren’t many city dwellers who could make such a claim.
And the pigeons who have moved into the neighborhood will be gone by mid October. They may stay year round in the downtown area, but they are still transients in our part of town.
Of course I’m writing this before the height of motorcycle season. There were plenty of local bikers out and about yesterday, and a few tourists have come to the hills to get ahead of the rush of the 75th Sturgis Rally, but we all know what is coming. The first weeks of August are going to see a real increase in the number of guests in our neighborhood and most of them will be riding motorcycles. Mostly it requires greater vigilance when driving, which is a good skill to exercise all the time. Still all of those motorcycles do increase the amount of noise in the hills and we do like living in a rather quiet neighborhood most of the year.
Nat King Cole used to sing about those lazy hazy crazy days of summer. The pace around here doesn’t seem to have slowed quite that much. We’ve got lists of choir to be done and tasks to accomplish. Summer doesn’t involve a lot of slowing down in a tourist town. On the other hand, a diet of soda and pretzels and beer probably isn’t in the works for healthy living when you get to be my age anyway.
Still, summer has come, and it feels pretty good.
It was hard to argue with the weather yesterday, however. It felt like summer. The temperature got up to 90 degrees, the sun was bright, the skies were clear with just a few high white clouds. It was lovely. After several weeks of rain, we’re heading into a week with few showers in the forecast. The temperatures aren’t going to be quite as high as they were yesterday for the rest of the week, but we’re definitely in for some very pleasant weather.
I love sleeping with my windows open. Fresh air from outside always seems a bit sweeter than the air that is boxed up indoors. I like waking to the birdsong even though we’ve had a few pigeons hanging around lately. Their repetitive cooing isn’t exactly musical, but theirs isn’t the only sound outside my window.
It is a reality, however, that our neighborhood is simply more noisy than was the case a few years ago. When I came back from paddling at the lake yesterday morning, a neighbor was out mowing his lawn at 7 am. We used to have an unspoken agreement in our neighborhood that we’d wait until 9 am on Saturdays to start up lawn mowers, weed eaters, and other noisy devices. Another neighbor was still mowing at 9 pm. Neither neighbor bothered me. They didn’t disrupt my sleep. I’m not concerned about people mowing their lawns. Still, I decided to wait until 9 am before I got out my lawn mower just in case I had a neighbor who wanted to sleep in. That seemed likely because one of my neighbors was just coming in at 2:30 am the night before, with plenty of slamming car doors, loud talking and yelling at their little dog. I do sleep with my windows open, after all.
Up and down the streets there are plenty of “for sale” signs around the neighborhood, and one of the houses on our street has sold within the last week. With hints that interest rates may go up, people are scrambling to get their financing in order and purchases made. We’ve lived in the same home for twenty years and thought there are a couple of neighbors who were here when we came, most of the homes in our neighborhood have residents who don’ remember what our subdivision was like a decade or more ago. Change is inevitable, and it doesn’t do any good to complain, but I can remember before we were annexed into the city, before the development of some of the neighboring subdivisions. When we moved in, our deer hadn’t been urbanized. If you went out of doors, or even turned on a porch light, the deer ran away. These days, we have urban deer for neighbors. I can walk out to get the newspaper in the morning and the deer will lift their heads and take a look, but won’t run away, and if I stomp my foot they’ll just walk across the street and come back as soon as I go inside. That is kind of nice because we get to see the fawns earlier and more often. And deer make good neighbors. They are quiet. On the other hand they’ll try to eat almost anything you plant. Between the hail and the deer, we aren’t expecting too many flowers this year. We keep the vegetable garden fenced, but each year we seem to plant fewer vegetables and more flowering plants inside the vegetable garden.
Despite my complaints about the changes in the neighborhood, we are still very fortunate to live here. It is truly a wonderful place and the weather is varied enough to keep us from being bored and temperate enough to be comfortable most of the year. I’m not eager to live in a place where the air conditioners run around the clock. I know that most of the world’s people live in urban areas where the neighbors are much closer and the personal space is much smaller than what we enjoy. I know it must seem ludicrous to a person from Connecticut to hear a South Dakotan complain about traffic. I doubt if I have ever been delayed in my drive to or from work by more than 5 minutes in the past 20 years. There aren’t many city dwellers who could make such a claim.
And the pigeons who have moved into the neighborhood will be gone by mid October. They may stay year round in the downtown area, but they are still transients in our part of town.
Of course I’m writing this before the height of motorcycle season. There were plenty of local bikers out and about yesterday, and a few tourists have come to the hills to get ahead of the rush of the 75th Sturgis Rally, but we all know what is coming. The first weeks of August are going to see a real increase in the number of guests in our neighborhood and most of them will be riding motorcycles. Mostly it requires greater vigilance when driving, which is a good skill to exercise all the time. Still all of those motorcycles do increase the amount of noise in the hills and we do like living in a rather quiet neighborhood most of the year.
Nat King Cole used to sing about those lazy hazy crazy days of summer. The pace around here doesn’t seem to have slowed quite that much. We’ve got lists of choir to be done and tasks to accomplish. Summer doesn’t involve a lot of slowing down in a tourist town. On the other hand, a diet of soda and pretzels and beer probably isn’t in the works for healthy living when you get to be my age anyway.
Still, summer has come, and it feels pretty good.