Scooping up Memories

Summer days that fuel winter nights.

I hear the dogs bark and the spell is broken. They are roaring at another dog. It is the dog who lives next door. This dog is roaring back. For a moment it was peaceful Sunday afternoon. I get up and investigate and discover it is in hand. Discussion have ended. Dogs are sheepishly ordered inside. Quiet resumes. I head back to what I was doing, collecting my thoughts as I stride across the lawn. I find my abandoned place where moments before I was blissfully lying, the only sound was the hum of a bee, the soft mutterings of an over hot bird. A cricket perhaps, singing its song. It is hot and I have been seeking the shade of the skeletal peach tree which is more branch than leaf. I find the sentence I had abandoned in the book I am reading.

I was inspired to sit out side and just lie in the garden after bee keeping earlier in the day. We had headed out around 9am in an attempt to the beat the predicted heat. Come noon we were starting to fail and the combination of the two layers of clothing, bee suit, jeans and a tshirt were beginning to cause a mild sweat. I found myself waiting for whatever reason while we were working in the paddock where our hives are located, just looking around. A hive is open, there is the smell of honey and soft wax. Bees are flying and I go and sit in the shade to combat my rising glow.

The grass is inviting and so for a brief moment I lay down and look up. Through the mesh of the my veil I was greeted with a blue sky, cloudless with the arm of a tree branch extending towards it, its fingers a mass of glossy greens leaves. A parakeet flies past. It was just a moment of stillness and reflection. I realised it is has been a summer of too few of these moments, mainly due to time and weather. It is now “official” Autumn, and while I don’t really prescribe to calendar dates declaring the seasonal changes, as I lay I could sense that this was perhaps the last of something. For a moment it is still felt like summer.

We return home and lunch. As I make lunch I spy a monarch butterfly visiting the garden. For me this is a the ultimate gold star, the seal of approval that I have done right by those who visit the garden. I follow her round and she seeks nectar from cosmos and dahlias admiring the bold clash of colours, the hot pink of the cosmos against the orange red of her wings. It is another moment that passes all to quick. Lunch calls, she flies on. I store the image in my camera which is an attempt to capture what I know my mind will hold tight come winter and I might ask’ Do you remember the monarch we saw in March”. Later we go to the beach, catching the last of the summer heat, cooling our toes in the cold sea water. The sounds and smells of the sea I scoop them up too, like I have the other pieces of the day. I am collecting them up, my memories of summer days, storing them for winter nights