Look at this bowl of flowers. At first glance, just a leggy bunch of late color on the deck. But as True and I were playing on the deck today, ok ~ she was playing, I was being ordered around by the world's most imperious puppy dog ~ I started seeing them differently. Look at them seriously for a second. Notice how their faces stretch eagerly to the last of the warm summer sun? That's the 'ham in a pot (and not in its traditional sense) right there. Way too soon the unbearably hot days of 78 degrees will be the stuff of dreams for next year. I know we don't have it the same as places like Vermont or Alaska, where you bed down and hibernate for months at a time. Still, the summers here are so achingly glorious, it's a bona fide tragedy when each one ends. I was looking around our deck at all the signs of a summer well-spent, that will soon be packed away until next year while we go inside, loose touch with the neighbors again, dash from car to house, huddle inward when we're out there. All these pretty little nothings mean we're outside whenever we want to be
So the mood seized us this evening and we cranked up the fire pit on the deck and busted out the makings for s'mores! 
True was ecstatic that I was so moved by the mood that I let her have two
I gotta say, cleaning marshmallow off a five-year old is probably the world's quickest way to squelch nostalgic melancholia
