Summer, now and past, and a million apologies.

The weather here is still great. There have been the occasional long sleeved nights and one or two mornings that called for a rain coat, but really it isn't over yet.  What I really mean to say is I'm sorry. This apology is mainly for me, but when I looked back and say I last wrote about Popsicles in June and it's now September 1st, I felt very, very guilty.  I guess that's what happens to summers- they slip by. Sometimes lazily and sometimes in a blink.  The best part though is what lingers.  As a young child I remember get dressed to go skiing in depths of winter, pulling my many pairs of long underwear over a pale belly and legs and arms still so kissed with sun, that hardly faded until early spring.  Now that I am older, and live in Seattle where my tan (if there ever was one) has already faded, I will wake to wintry mornings and a freezer full of preserved fruit.  I am of course still ridiculously afraid of botulism, but am working hard to over come that fear. I can't even imagine how much summer will linger once I do.

My family was never really one for family vacations. The few I do remember occurred deep into the middle of winter. While I was sometimes jealous of other peoples summer vacations, I've come to realize that the reason we never wandered far was because there really was no place else as beautiful. Rural New England in the summer, the vast expanse of our natural playground extending across New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine was in and of itself vacation enough.  Backyards full of blueberries, endless loops on your bicycle, the rivers and ponds for morning, afternoon, and evening swims. Some of my favorite memories are from summer camp, where I spent one precious month of every summer for five years on Lake Coniston, a lake almost unidentifiable, but still to this day one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.

Really what I am getting at is the essence of summer. It's how you choose to spend your days. It's the things you remember long after they are gone and the things that bring it all crashing back.  For me, it's marshmallows.  There is nothing more charming and wonderful than an s'more.

So in celebration of another well spent summer that is sure to linger I give you these fancy s'mores:

These days summers don't really mean vacation, but they still mean a lot of good people, picnics, bbqs, and the occasional birthday-rainy-day-late-summer-indoor-fire-pit.