The boys of summer

More than the 90-degree days, the air quality alerts, the heat indexes, or the humidity that feels like a wet blanket inside your lungs, nothing says summer in Ohio to me better than the real boys (and I guess girls) of summer: fresh peaches and nectarines.

I'm working through my first batch, which is staying cool in the refrigerator, and while these peaches and nectarines are not from Ohio (Georgia, actually), they're a clear sign that this is summer time. Every summer I regret that I don't eat enough fresh peaches (J. Alfred Prufrock, be darned!), so this year I intend to make amends for all those summers I wasn't eating peaches consciously enough.

Getting good peaches in Puerto Rico is almost impossible, of course, especially since they're shipped frozen and by the time they get to my tropical island they die a pretty quick death. And by living in farm country I've learned that nothing tastes as fantastic as when you can get it where it's actually grown. Thus, one of the perks of living up here, in this middle-of-nowhere place so often plagued by miserable weather, is the hand-picked peaches and the nectarines.

Now that my real summer has started -- I just turned in the grades for the summer program and am looking at the blank squares in my appointment book with glee -- I plan to make up for the crazy busy half of this year by doing nothing of any significance, and with a vengeance.

I recently ordered a few books from Amazon with a gift card that a kind friend gave me as a post-dissertation defense gift, and recently received my choices, which are now stacked on top of War and Peace, awaiting me. I felt positively reckless two nights ago when I started Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford for which I have absolutely no purpose except enjoying her humor and her writing, which I adore (especially now that I've read or heard audiobooks of Jane Austen's novels so often that I might actually know most of her novels by heart).

Today I'm going up to my small college on the hill to take care of a few odds and ends, and later this week I'm going to the humongous university from where I'll graduate in August to order my regalia, return library books I've had for years, and officially checkout of my department.

This is a summer that marks many endings, and an equal number of beginnings. How appropriate that the time is rife with golden, fuzzy peaches and shiny, smooth nectarines. I can't wait to take a bite!