... the dog days of summer.

Oh how I love this time of year. The days pass timelessly and we revel in the length of our evenings here and find ourselves falling into bed only after the sun has made it's descent into the night sky. It is not uncommon for us all to go to bed together at 11 pm or later. On really hot nights we all lie on our bed with the window open and the fan on... eating frozen grapes and reading fairy stories. Without the rush of an early bedtime routine and the need to get up early to meet our academic obligations we can be free to live as our bodies desire. We are all late to bed, late risers. The first few weeks of summer I fight this flow because I have to work so hard all year to keep us in anything resembling a routine. And I fight the guilt until I remember that "early to bed, early to rise" is only an arbitrary virtue.

This summer we have enjoyed a little excuse named Lola. She has allowed us the opportunity to do as we damn well please and so we have! We have grown a garden and are now harvesting the rewards. We have travelled to the coast and dipped our feet in the ocean. We have adventured close to home, picking berries, throwing stones into the North Saskatchewan river, having parties, going to parties... And still our summer holds so much more for us.

We are looking forward to Folk Fest this week (Sarah Mclachlan and Tracy Chapman all on one night) and the arrival of a dear friend from Scotland on Saturday to give us the great excuse to vacation on our own turf.

All of this leaves little time to sit and write and I miss that but I will have plenty of time to catch up in the fall when the cool evenings bring us indoors to find warmth in our home once again. So I leave you with a few juicy images from the last month or so...