Summer like an airplane banner

Summer announced itself like banner plane buzzing the beach. 

The mid-eighties temperatures made me shed pants for shorts and rummage through the drawers to find a sleeveless shirt.

A light breeze ruffled the full leaves and their undersides flashed silver. 

Summer's first fruit, local strawberries, were available.  I beelined down the road, windows down, elbow on the car door. (I didn't even think about Mother's dire warning that my arm could get cut off doing that!) 

As I drove up and down our hills, a tractor grumbled through a field.  I smelled the warm, dry hay, its fragrance released by the farmer's blade.



My farmer-neighbor's cabbage formed tight green heads in tidy rows. 






The barley bent under the growing weight of the spikelets.
 

barley   by Victor Szalvay

 



At Country Road Strawberries the gate hung open and I drove up the gravel drive. Pickers bent in half over the plants, saving me the work.

Under the metal-roofed shed the berries, intensely red and capped by green hulls, nestled in the white cardboard boxes. I lifted the box, and the jostled berries released their perfume. 

What says "Welcome, Summer!" better than fresh strawberries?