Charmed Life: The Sounds of Summer

The heat and humidity this week have cooked my brain and wilted my spirit. I'm ready to flee back north to my favorite little Northern city, Grand Marais, Minnesota where the temperature at 11 a.m. is a blissful 66.

Ahhh sounds like heaven to me. Prince Charming LOVES this heat. The hotter, sticker and more humid it is, the better he loves summer. He thinks this week's weather has been just about perfect.

How is it that such opposites always seem to attract each other? So while I'd love to have spent the week draped over the cooling vents with three fans blowing on me, P.C. has forced me out into what is for him blissful weather.

I've gone out empty handed all week, no camera, which is like being suddenly blinded. The new camera is ordered, shipped and should arrive any minute. But until it arrives, being without the camera forced me to focus in a new way this week on the SOUNDS of summer. (Click on each of the links to receive your audio postcards as you read.)

Have you noticed the wonderful unique sounds of summer? My attention was grabbed early in the week when barely into Sunday morning just a little past midnight, P.C. and I both sat upright in bed startled by the loud boom like a cannon of thunder so close by it shook the house. "We're under attack," I told P.C.

Prince Charming, as he always does during a storm, checked all of the windows, doors, and outside for any signs of water coming in or damage, letting me drift dreamless back to sleep. This is one of the best things about being married to P.C. --this patrolling of the perimeter during storms. I sleep unconcerned knowing he's on the job. It's a thankless task, and can leave him just the tiniest bit grumpy when I don't wake and shower him with kisses but instead snore with the ease of someone who knows a responsible party is keeping me safe when he returns to report all is well.

Later Sunday, the skies cleared and we went for our first bike ride of summer together.

This is from last fall. As you can see P.C. dresses in a very bespoke manner for his bike rides.

Just as we have differences of opinion about the perfect summer temperature, we have different styles of biking. I hop on and pedal. P.C. likes to go for the "wheeeee" of biking. He'll pedal really fast to get ahead of me, then lift his feet out and coast. I keep thinking I'm going to attach a playing card to his spokes so he can have all of the fun of his "wheeeee" biking.

Prince Charming is a man of great gravitas and decorum (note picutre above). Except when it comes to biking and swimming. We've spent many afternoons this week at the pool.

I like an elegant entrance down the wide steps of the pool, P.C. likes to cannon-ball off the diving boards. He's gotten the respect of all the little kids who gather around the sides of the pool to watch.

Charlie and Linda were here Wednesday for dinner.

As we walked them out to their car after the evening's festivities, the sound of the cicadas was almost deafening.

I fixed pork chops in the crock pot so as not to heat the house up for our dinner party. They were delicious! Though I think my crock pot's high setting is a little too hot, I'm recommending only cooking them for 3 to 3/12 hours before you check them. The USDA site recommend an internal temperature of 145 degrees. Mine cooked for 4 hours and were just a bit over cooked.

Here's the recipe from All Recipes

Slit the sides of 4 pork chops so that the cooking fluids can penetrate the meat.

1/4 C olive oil
1 C chicken broth
1 T garlic
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
1 T paprika
1 T poultry seasoning
Salt and Pepper to taste.

Pour all ingredients into the crock pot, then place meat in so that's it's covered by juices. Should be done in 3 to 31/2 hours.

Preparing the dinner in the cool comfort of our air conditioned home reminded me of all the hot summer days when Mom would order us out to the garden to pick beans. The hot work was finished once we'd picked them. They still had to be stemmed. We'd find a bit of shade and hope for a breeze to stem them. Then bring the "mess of beans" into the house so that Mom could can them. She used a pressure cooker which added even more heat and humidity to the all-ready suffocating interior. Mom never trusted the pressure cooker, for good reason, and would shoo us out of the kitchen.

One time, the pressure cooker blew up. We ended up with beans on the ceiling! We kids knew that it wasn't a good scene and lit out for the safety of the tree house, our one regret was leaving the comfort of laying right in front of the old fan.

Speaking of things blowing up, we didn't even make it all the way through the Republican National Convention before the political telephone calls started pouring in. We thought after surviving the onslaught of calls from the primary season we'd completed our civic duty. But turns out this year, not only is Iowa the first in the nation to caucus, we're an important swing state. And so the calls are pouring in. Every time the phone rings in my studio it startles me and I jump. I've ruined more than one painting. I thought about taking the phone out, but P.C. vetoed that idea.

When I was a kid growing up with a party line, only the adults answered the phone. So imagine my delight when I was rummaging around rearranging things and discovered this old Bakelite phone! It has the softest, most wonderful ring. Because I grew up NOT ANSWERING to this ring, I feel no sense of urgency or dread when the phone rings. No more jumping. Every time it rings I expect Grandma to answer it with her nasal "Yellow!" I think she really said "hello" but it always sounded like "yell" pause and drop the voice and octave, "low". Grandma's been gone for a long time now, but hearing that ring brings back the pleasure of her company.

Grandma had the softest skin, even on the hottest summer days, she'd let me snuggle up to her while she sat on the back steps in the evenings, feeling the soft skin of her arms, drinking in the smell of White Shoulders bath powder. We'd sit there looking out over the Raccoon River Valley, blue with haze and humidity. The green pastures rolling from the steps out to the timber. We didn't say much on those long, hot, hazy summer evenings. We'd just sit together enjoying each other's company, listening to the crickets and cicadas.

This week without the camera brought me so many little audio postcards from the past linked to the present and carrying me into the future.

The way a pebble dropped into the water sends out concentric ripples. The ripples reflect an action in the past, the pebble dropping; and effect the present, the up and down of the wave and let you see the future as the wave moves out to the edge of the pond, loosing itself in the gentle lap of the waves striking shore.

Before you go, let me reach into the photo archives to show you (albeit from last year) what's blooming in the garden this week.