Okay, NOW Summer Has Arrived!

After 4 weeks of rain and cold this last week of June has finally decided to release some real summer weather to us winter weary Minnesotans. I love this time of year and so does my loyal trainer, Jack. He loves it because it is softball/baseball season and the park where we walk every day has 4 ball fields. This means nothing to me, but to Jack each walk is a quest for balls. The best we have done so far is 16 baseballs and 4 softballs.

Summer walks in the park are like stepping back in time. The smells of fresh cut grass, blooming clover and humid air that feels like a blanket brings me right back to the circle where all of us Kacher kids were raised alongside dozens of other families. We were in a new housing development that, just a year earlier, had been a cornfield. Maybe it is just me, but I am certain that being raised in the 60's was about as good as it could get. There were woods where we built tree forts, caught butterflies and played hide and seek. Every spring we went to the feed store and picked up a couple of baby ducks that would grow up and move into the pond behind our house.

One summer my friend Renee and I convinced our parents to let us rent horses and keep them in my backyard. I guess they agreed because it was cheaper than horse camp. One Saturday morning we were dropped off at Hanson's ranch about 10 miles from home, picked out two horses and headed back to the suburbs. For 7 amazing days we strolled around Bloomington on horses. We went to parks and jumped baseball benches, road to the beach, sold rides to little kids and at the end of the day, since we had no barn, we just tied them to the cloths line posts.

Anything was possible when you were a kid in the summer and maybe anything is possible when you are 50 in the summer as well. The temperature outside is over 100, I think I will grab my water wings and head to the beach... Oh wait, I have meeting tonight. Well, maybe tomorrow....