Summer is here.....

 It is hot. Very hot. Yes, this is England. And we are melting. Half the young people I see around have sunburned shoulders, and clothing seems to be shrinking to a bare minimum. THAT kind of hot. And, because of water restrictions, paddling pools may not be filled or water slides set up etc etc etc. So the kitchen floor (tile) is a good option, if only it was a little softer. Bare feet rule.

 The garden is growing almost visibly. The beans sprang out of the soil and are over 4 inches high in just one day.{And now my space bar is misbehaving.} And the hanging baskets and the pots are filling out. Petunias are starting to bloom, and colour is creeping back into the garden at last. Rosebuds will open soon, and their perfume will fill the air. The padded summer cushions are on the loungers outside under the open sun umbrella, and it is almost too bright. Maybe I will put the bunting up tomorrow. I think I said that yesterday. It needs to go up when I can summon the energy.

The first rose to bloom was this little tea rose. It beat all the other big roses, quietly and hidden behind leaves, until I saw it and shifted the branches away. Well done, little rose.

This year - all the years, in fact, are going by so quickly. Everything my mother ever said about time flying is true, you know. And it flies faster as you get older. I was one of those teenagers who sighed dramatically and rolled the eyes and said "Yeah, right, Ma". I knew all the answers and my mother knew none back then. Of course. And now, I hear myself saying the same words I remember my Mum uttering - don't wish your life away, age is all in the mind and so on.

I look in the mirror and I wonder if what I see is real, or my imagination. Are those wrinkles? I stopped counting the grey hairs many years ago - they don't bother me at all. We see ourselves so differently to the way others see us, don't we? We sound different to the way we think we sound. Will my children remember the laughter and the smiles? Or will they remember the frowns? Will they remember the love? The fun? Or the difficult bits? There are always difficult bits in every life. Golden lives do not exist outside fairy tales, and actually, fairy tales were very gruesome, now I come to think about it. They taught good lessons. Ergo, golden lives do not exist. At all.

I think it depends on character, in a way. The positives remember the good. The negatives will remember the bad. I am a positive one, and I remember the good. I also remember the things which hurt, but not as a burden, as another lesson I learned along the way. Many many lessons. It is all about the pruning and the shaping of the character.

The kids don't see the wrinkles. Or at least I don't think they do. They see "Mum" "Mother darling", "Mommy", "MDS", "Mother". I go by many names. Moreglanny. Actually, it is more "MOREglanny" at the moment. I gather Missy's favourite colour is pink and her favourite number is 6. Well, that is what she told me emphatically yesterday.

Back to aging.....

It doesn't bother me. I am more than half way through my life, and there has been a lot packed into it so far. I wish sometimes that I could say that I have weathered the storms, and come out of those tempestuous seas and that now there is calm water ahead. It doesn't work quite like that. It would be nice though, wouldn't it?

Ah, musing. Time flies. Can we just slow it down a little? Please?