Summer arrives this week. This year, I’m planning to make
the most of it. I find if you don’t plan ahead for this sort of thing, you
blink and just like that, summer is over.
Each summer we pack our weekends with a number of events
that take us away from home. We go camping, we rent a cottage, we visit friends
and we travel to take part in festivals and celebrations. Even if it’s just for
a few hours and not overnight, it takes us away from a day on the farm. This
year is going to be different.
I’m not at the Farmer’s Market this year. I gave up my
market space so that a farmer who is working hard to produce local food can
reach his customers on Sunday afternoons. I used to schlep my tent, tables and
boxes of books out to the car every Sunday and spend approximately five hours
of my weekend in the hot sun. While sales were good, I really wanted to be at
home. Reading a book. Weeding my garden. Sitting on the porch with my husband.
I’m also not working weekends this summer. Last year my job
was busiest on weekends – working at the liquor store – so although I saw most
of my friends and knew where the parties were each week – I didn’t have the
energy to go anywhere. This year I’m
sleeping in on Saturdays. Making a big breakfast on Sundays and enjoying my coffee
on the porch. I’m parking the car on Friday and not moving it til Monday
morning unless I absolutely have to.
Things will come up. They always do. And we have certain
things we are looking forward to – like the Kemptville Live Music Festival –
which will take up the majority of one weekend in July. But for the most part,
if you’re looking for me, I’ll be home. With my dog. He’s tired of being shoved
in his crate while I hop in the car and zoom from one event to the next. He
wants me to stay home too. It’s no fun playing fetch by yourself.
This plan will take a little organization and creativity, I
know. And I might have to turn down the occasional invitation if it’s going to
mean I have zero downtime on any given weekend. We are going to stay local when
possible, even when we are ‘going out’.
I even found a way to get my International students to
Parliament Hill on Canada Day without having to take them myself: my daughter
is going via Uber and they can come along. That’s great news to me because I
don’t do well in crowds and the last time I was on the Hill on July 1st
a flying beer bottle hit me in the back of the head.
The Farmer has his summer project – he’s building a house on
Bass Lake near Lombardy. That means I will have someplace to go if I really
want to get away from home for a day – but it also means he will be happily
occupied doing his favourite thing so I don’t have to worry about entertaining
him. I can do my own favourite things. One of them might be sitting on his
newly built dock, my toes in the water, while I sip a cold beer and read a
book.
We do have one week-long getaway planned that I am really
excited about. We will be renting the same cottage we rented a few years ago,
on the Big Rideau. I do love me a cottage getaway. It’s a heckuva lot of work,
because you have to pack up everything you might possibly need for every kind
of weather, activity, menu plan and surprise guest. Then you have to clean the
place top to bottom when you arrive, because mice nest in the weirdest places
(like the stove – which you won’t discover until you are heating it up to cook
Sunday dinner…). Then you enjoy yourself for a few days, floating around the
lake on an air mattress, roasting marshmallows and singing around the campfire
at night, sleeping in each morning. And before you know it, the week is over
and you have to do everything in reverse in order to go home.
Summer in Canada. It’s arrives this week, and aren’t we
happy to see it. My goodness you are a beautiful season, Summer. Let’s just
hope you are in a good mood until the end of September. We have plans – to do
nothing.
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