{"id":3169,"date":"2011-06-13T14:52:24","date_gmt":"2011-06-13T19:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=3169"},"modified":"2011-06-13T14:52:24","modified_gmt":"2011-06-13T19:52:24","slug":"summer-to-hate-it-or-not-to-hate-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=3169","title":{"rendered":"Summer: To hate thee or not to hate thee?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nLooking toward Prabhupada Village<\/a> from Moir Farm Road<\/em><\/p>\n

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
\nThou art more lovely and more temperate…<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 William Shakespeare, Sonnet XVIII<\/strong>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if summer days were still temperate?<\/p>\n

I realized while I was mowing this morning that I don’t hate summer. What I hate is abnormal summer. After a long run of days with temperatures in the 90s and as high as 97, today seems downright cool. It was 80 degrees out when I was mowing. Now, at 3:30 p.m., it’s 86. It feels like a cool spell, but really it’s not. It’s just close to normal (though still a few degrees above normal). According to the National Weather Service, the normal temperature for June 13 in Greensboro, N.C. (south of here) is 83. Amazing, isn’t it? Temperatures come down to a few degrees above normal and it feels like a cool spell.<\/p>\n

But this is what summers used to be like.<\/p>\n

Since the weather was so fine, and since I had to go to the post office anyway, I went on a short picture-taking expedition to Danbury, then through back roads to Sandy Ridge, and home again.<\/p>\n

I stopped to talk to Carl Hicks, who was out on his tractor on Mission Road. Mr. Hicks owns the land that the nearest Verizon tower sits on, and I drove by hoping to bump into a Verizon technician who I might pump for information on Verizon’s Internet services in these parts. There was no technician, but Mr. Hicks did confirm that Verizon finally ran fiber to the tower a couple of months ago. Maybe that will help with my Internet service, though I’ve not seen any improvement yet.<\/p>\n

Mr. Hicks and I talked a while under the shade of a huge oak tree. His view is the same as mine: It wasn’t this hot when we were young. Weather like today’s reminded us both of how summers used to be.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nButterfly weed on Pitzer Road<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nMr. Hicks and his tractor<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nMr. Hicks<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nMoratock Park on the Dan River near Danbury<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nA classic Jeep near Sandy Ridge<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nBrandon, who was skate-boarding on Moir Farm Road<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nBrandon<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nBrandon’s dog Spud<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Looking toward Prabhupada Village from Moir Farm Road Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate… \u2014 William Shakespeare, Sonnet XVIII Wouldn’t it be wonderful if summer days were still temperate? I realized while I was mowing this morning that I don’t hate summer. What I hate is … Continue reading “Summer: To hate thee or not to hate thee?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stokes-county","category-sustainable-living"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}