I love the smell of old canvas in the morning

Oooh, the cicadas are out now, to me that is the sign of serious summer. The sound is both nostalgic and foreboding. On the one hand, it causes me to instantly recall growing up in Ithaca and sleeping out in the yard in an ancient, funny smelling tent. Brownie watching, (shooting stars, if you haven’t been exposed to that particular colloquialism) and the first time I found an abandoned exoskeleton of a cicada clinging to the sticky sap of the Gaylor's massive blue spruce and being fairly freaked out by it.

Then again, it also reminds me of laying awake, drenched in sweat, not being able to sleep for hours. Or having to crawl way down into the roots of the privacy hedge and sit there with the spiders just to get some deep shade.

There is a god awful black and white polaroid of me, about age 3, bent over in a bucket of water, having stripped off my offending wet bathing suit (which I’m told was my wont). It was taken there in that yard which had been (in my view) ruthlessly re-landscaped the last time I nosed around there. I guess that's OK, I guess it has to be, the cicadas are here too.

Note: Not the exact picture I was lookin' for but damn close