One of my favorite summer pleasures is al fresco dining. Sitting outside, particularly early in the morning with my newspaper and coffee is an elemental pleasure. On Sunday mornings it is even more sublime as the din of autos, delivery trucks, landscapers, etc. are eliminated leaving me just the birds and the simple rustle of leaves as the only background noise. This year, however, eating outside has been infrequent and mostly limited to lunch or dinner. And this August when we should be living outside all the time and cooling our heels in my granddaughter’s inflatable swimming pool, we instead have been shutting the windows and putting on extra blankets at night.
Yesterday there was hope that an a.m. outside dining experience would be possible, but a raft of thunderstorms blew through dropping rain and temperatures that thwarted any such possibility. Yesterday’s sultry temps of the high 80s now are 30 degrees lower and the wind is brisk.
So like in the winter, I let the dog out, I grab my papers off the driveway, start the coffee and sit down on my stool in the kitchen peering out the window, watching the birds feed outside, wishing I was one of them. Time to start a fire.
