[Castle Island/Pleasure Bay, South Boston; 7/5/15]
July July watch it fly. After our winter of discontent (and record-breaking snowfall - and the snow piles haven't even all melted yet!), we are enjoying our all too brief summer of lovely weather here in the Boston area. Last weekend was a long holiday weekend, which I spent in and around the city with D.
Boston has hosted an annual Independence Day celebration for more than 40 years with the Boston Pops Orchestra and fireworks on the Charles River. When D had his apartment on the top floor, he had large parties every year on the 4th on his deck. This was the second year he's been in his 1st floor apartment, so no huge party (just as well, really), but we had easy access to the Esplanade for the rehearsal concert the previous night - although with terror threats we could only get so close to the concert area and the Esplanade was unnervingly overrun with both regular civilian police and state troopers and military police. Sheesh. It's generally a lovely walk along the river on rehearsal night, with the concert piped over loudspeakers here and there, casual and not overly crowded away from the stage. We walked as far as the lines at the checkpoint well around the stage area, then turned back and walked along the river until we were out of security range but not out of sound range, enjoying the sunset and the music.
[Charles River from the Esplanade; 7/3/15]
Then on the night of the 4th, we watched the proceedings on TV until the appointed hour that the fireworks were about to be launched, whereupon we walked down the couple of blocks to the end of his street to watch the display. Unlike the downpours that doused us the last couple of years or so, the skies were clear this time, although the humid stillness held the smoke in and obscured or made interesting some of the bursts.
[Boston 4th of July fireworks]
In late June, I got in a visit to see my 87-year-old dad in Michigan. He's doing well considering the previous month he had emergency surgery and then was re-admitted from the rehab center with complications. He'd been home in his senior apartment a couple of weeks when I got there and was doing much better, thankfully. He was able to get out with his walker (we'd feared he wouldn't be able to leave his apartment at all), so we had dinners out and so forth. We had a nice visit, always too short. I got out one day by myself for a walk in the university arboretum, which I just discovered a couple of years ago. Always lovely there.
[Nichols Arboretum, Ann Arbor, MI; 6/19/15]
D and I also got up to the New Hampshire Seacoast one day in mid-June, including a stop in Portsmouth and a late idyll on the beach.
This weekend, D is away visiting friends and I'm catching a breather from some intense work weeks. I'm trying to savor the summer, which always goes by too quickly, and alas is often all too busy a time at work. I have some birthday celebrations with my gal friends coming up, and I have an entire week off in mid-August (yes, an entire week off at a time is a major coup here in the US), during which D and I will spend about 5 days out on Cape Cod relaxing, enjoying the beach and dinners out. I'm looking forward to that, but not so fast that I want the time between to fly by any faster than it already is.
[Gone fishing; Castle Island/Pleasure Bay, South Boston; 7/5/15]
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