Last night was cold, down to 40°. This morning the house was really cold, 62°. I figured I had somehow gone back in time to early spring so I checked the calendar. It said June 2nd but sitting here in my sweatshirt with socks on my feet has made me skeptical.

My dance card has only two entries, my uke practice and lesson, no concerts. It will be a week of doing a few chores, really only a few, reading and finishing my jigsaw puzzle. I like lazy weeks.

My neighborhood is quiet. The kids are older now. The only sound I usually hear is the kid down the street shooting hoops and the sound of his basketball bouncing on the street and then hitting the rim. Henry is the loudest dog. He barks at every person who dares walk on his street or every truck which stops. Amazon, UPS and the mailman’s truck are, to Henry, the worst offenders. He barks constantly at them and scares most delivery persons trying to drop off a package at my house. The mornings are delightfully noisy with the songs of birds while, at night, insects rule the air. They are a welcome break to the silence.

When I was growing up, I lived in a noisy neighborhood. It was filled with kids. Most families had multiple kids. Summer was the loudest season. Doors slammed, kids played outside all day, dogs barked and mothers yelled out back doors. I was five when we moved to that neighborhood. Back then, our playgrounds were the field, the swamp and the woods on two sides of the field. The grass in the field was high, green in the spring, but it turned brown quickly under the summer sun. We hunted grasshoppers. We played tag and ran through the field chasing each other. We walked to the swamp. In the spring there were water lilies and tadpoles. In the summer dragon flies skimmed the top of the green water. Frogs jumped from half submerged tree branches into the water. We tried to catch the ones closest to the edge of the water, but they were too quick. We just got wet. A water tower was up a small hill close to the swamp. We always wished we could climb it so we could see the world from the top. It was probably a good thing we couldn’t. On the street behind the water tower was a field with a red barn and two grazing horses. We tried to catch them so we could ride. It was probably a good thing we couldn’t. Growing up, I never realized I lived in paradise.

This entry was posted on June 2, 2026 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.