The choice of the seasons as the leitmotif for these contributions to Southern Women's Web Ring section is leading this person to intrigue and more profound understanding of the organic imperatives the cycle of the seasons on this planet earth impose on its living creatures. A common expression among professionals in child psychology and psychiatry is; "the best ally we have to our healing efforts is normal development.."  It goes without saying the perspective of inevitable change and the seasons also provides a powerful search engine and systematizer for the experiences of our lives.
 

With appreciation of the spectre of unhappy truths and riddles awaiting confrontation, many endeavor to re-enactment of those periods of life demanding only absorption with self. I unashamedly acknowledge such preoccupation with the "salad days" of past summers because it serves my purposes so admirably.
 

In the real summers of my Oklahoma childhood it was the night when life could begin to stir as energy depleted by daytime heat restored  itself,  aided by supper of hot coffee, skillet fried round steak ,tomatos and onions. The aroma of the sturdy 4 O'Clocks garnished the air enfolding men holding hoses dispersing water on uncut grass and browned shrubs. The splattering of the water blended with the voices of the women  and snapping beans and shelling peas. Children paused in their games to hear much more than intended.
 

My mother's mother looked to the crescent moon and declared; "They had just invented the train when I was born, the car came after I had all but two of my children, the airplane after more than half of my grandchildren and you my daughter will live to see men go to and walk on that moon."  And so she did.
 

Stars.  These summers of our earliest memories were night skies so filled with the blinking of stars which made distant lightening bugs joining the patterns of the constellations difficult to discern.  A rising Leo appeared from  below the far distant horizon and Gemini  before disappearing first descended well below eye level. The Milky Way could be imagined as just broadcast seed. some hanging still in the atmosphere.
 

Summer dreamers  like those skies of the plains. presented expanses of lights which promised the child I was  boundless unique  places and individuals I hoped to  see and know and connect to. Even as I child I knew the time too short.
 
 

This being a personal site which implies permission to self-indulgence I take advantage in the presenting of these images, a number of which are personal photographs from some of my summers past.  They are presented as entertainment and nothing more but I do claim coprights.  However if an image particularly strikes one's eye  I will respond to e-mail requests for use on non-commercial personal pages.