The Unofficial Beginning...

My summer selfie

of summer.

This is the first big weekend of summer, though it's still really spring. On Friday, everyone works but half a day, then heads down to the Cape (or down the Cape, as we say in Quincy) or up to Boothbay Harbor.

The sun, at six AM, casts orange hued  El Greco-ish shadows making the world strange and quietly magical. Even still, that hard winter is branded onto my brain. The grass in our yard, the flowers and trees full of leaves continue to surprise me.

Rocco and Coco are thrilled to bits over the open windows. They get the briny ocean perfume along with the intriguing scent of passing sparrows, grackles and mousies.

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night. 
~Rainer Maria Rilke

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

It was a splendid summer morning and it seemed as if nothing could go wrong.
 ~John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever  

Kodachrome...
it gives us those nice, bright colors,
gives us the greens of summers,
makes ya think all the world's a sunny day,
Oh yeah!
I've got a Nikon camera,
I'd love to take a photograph,
so mama don't take...
my Kodachrome away.
~Paul Simon, Kodachrome