Summer - Grandma A

The Spring had passed with the trees looking gorgeous in flowers, and then that ended abruptly and it was cold, cold. The plants in the atrium shivered and complained and waited to bloom and at last it was summer. From cold with the heater on it was just as suddenly hot, very hot. All day I cowered in the house with the doors closed as the rose plants in the atrium burned, zizzled, cooked. At first it was not too bad. I opened the doors at night and shut them for the day. Night at least it does get cooler, unlike Gary, Indiana where the night, singing with the song of mosquitoes, and cicadas, and heat, stays about the same night and day, 95. The family at night gathered on the floor next to the open door downstairs, too hot upstairs, but it was a lost cause, there was nothing but heat coming through that open door. Ah, how lovely it used to be when a rain preceded by lightning, and suddenly darkened skies, poured down and we ran out to get wet, all wet, all gloriously cool and wet! A welcome relief from the gooey wet of sweat. But event that had its good feature. All the ailments in the body poured out through the skin and one prepared for the winter with all one's frame inner and outer made clean. Unfortunately when one is 89 the ability to sweat seems to disappear. The outer and inner heat rise together. One staggers to the couches and barely breathes waiting for the night and a chance to open the door. The roses having no way or place to stagger to, drop their burned leaves and support the bugs, the bugs which eat chunks of the buds, and clip the leaves, the bugs which gather in clans on the buds and eat, the bugs which bring mildews, the bugs. From the dry woods come the coyotes moving to the irrigated retirement community, accompanies by the deer also weary of dried up forage when they can destroy gardens and eat tender buds about to bloom. The turkeys wandering about looking large and healthy annoy various dwellers who want them killed. One of them got in a house and frantic tried to fly out through a window breaking the glass. A fox made a next and had a family of little foxes in a closed in space in another house. The dry heat was bringing the wild life into civilization. Plants, particularly promising buds of beauty, pet dogs and cats were candy for these wild creatures. The vast crawling society of slugs and snails had hidden away to appear at the first rain. Rossmoor was enjoying baking and being restricted in water and it was another summer. Oh how we longed for winter! Oh in the winter how we longed for summer! Oh in the atrium how the plants did fry and suffer and flop over and shrivel. Oh, summer, oh, summer!