- Fall
Most of fall is fleece weather! Summer is over, and we are back to a routine with the kids in school. The sun is going down at a civilized time. After months of everything being !!bright and happy!! all the time!! we are finally reminded that everything ends and that everyone we love will someday be as dead as the annuals I forced myself to plant in May when I was pretending to like gardening. The trees are gorgeous colors one day and then wistful bare branches the next. We have Halloween, my favorite holiday! We have Thanksgiving which is just a lazy four-day weekend and does not require any gift purchasing! You cannot have light without darkness, and this entire season of barreling toward the darkness is poignant and beautiful to me. - Winter
You have to be hardy to survive winter here. I like it when nature is trying to kill me every time I go outside. I love the dark afternoons. I get out candles and I put up fairy lights in the house and everything glows. You have to make your own light and your own heat in the winter, and this appeals to me. We pile blankets on the couches for both humans and cats, and there is no pressure to go outside after 4 PM. This is puzzle season for me. I play the piano and read a lot in the winter and never fret about the house getting too hot if I turn on the oven. Fresh snow makes the outside world bright and quiet and perfect. There is no yardwork, only shoveling. And sledding. And building snowmen and snow forts. - Summer
My feelings about summer have changed a lot ever since we bought our cabin. Now that I have regular lake access, I find summer much more tolerable. Summers when we lived in New York City were absolutely awful; walking down the stairs into the subway stations was like descending into hell. There was nowhere to swim. I was working full-time back then so still had to put on dress pants and a blouse every day and then sweat my ass off waiting for the N train. I cannot handle humidity despite more than a decade of living in humid places. But summer means swimming and swimming is my favorite thing. Summer means campfires and open windows in the morning. Summer means flexible schedules and my kids at home. And at some point every summer we get fresh peaches, so I will tolerate summer. - Spring
Muddy. Grey. Muddy. Wet. Muddy. I do not like spring at all. The snow starts to melt and everything looks like shit. The snow finishes melting and everything looks like shit. Plants and flowers start to struggle back to life and everything still looks like shit for a couple weeks. Then you have to clean up your yard and try to keep some plants alive. If you’re a woman you have to pretend you enjoy gardening and smile and say thank you when someone gets you a potted plant for Mother’s Day. We go to the cabin and the water looks so inviting but it’s only 56 degrees and that is too cold even for someone like me who is built like a harp seal. We have to set our clocks forward and it takes almost two full weeks for my body to adjust. I’m not sweating now but I will be soon. And did I mention it’s muddy? Spring is the worst.