After our long damp Pacific Northwest Winter, Summer has arrived.  As a former resident of perpetually sunny Southern California, I once took sunshiny days for granted.  Rain used to be a novelty. Not anymore.


The thing that impresses me about the Pacific Northwest is that once the weather warms up, everyone comes out to play.  Neighbors you may not have seen all winter emerge from their houses.  Evening walks with the dogs become a social event.  People drive around town with  kayaks or bikes strapped to their car.


Days are long. The sun creeps out around 4:30 AM. This confuses my dogs whose stomachs are cued to their perceived sense of time. (It is light, it must be breakfast time…)  In the winter they are unlikely to wake before 8AM as it is still dark.  I too wake earlier in the summer and will get up and out into the morning while the world is still quiet and cool.  Summertime is precious.


Work in my garden is busy.  The 8 yards of mulch delivered Memorial Day weekend has been reduced to 3.  Bucketfuls of weeds have been dislodged.  A couple of the flower beds need restructuring, but the rest of the garden is lovely.  The thing I fail to do is to stop and sit and look and enjoy.  


Not my Labs.  They maximize their napping, snacking and barking therapy sessions.  They lounge on the deck all summer, surveying  the neighborhood, fending off the barbarians, moving back and forth between the sunshine and the shade.  They are experts at stopping, sitting, looking and enjoying. 

My dogs have well defined priorities.

Summer isn’t long enough.  We continue our mad dash through the work week, doing whatever it is we do. We fail to stop, sit, look and enjoy.  Labor Day rolls around and we are stunned that summer has come to an end.

Life is like that. They say time goes faster as you age.  I believe it.  Of all the things you might have in this world, time is the most valuable.  Don’t squander it.  Savor it.  Be like my Labrador Retrievers.  Take the time to stop, sit, look and enjoy.