This Week's Old-Fashioned Pleasures August 3, 2018

“Week” is kind of generous…let’s call it “this summer’s old-fashioned pleasures” since these pictures go back a bit.

Lakes
From walking along the Big Lake (Michigan) to swimming and boating on smaller lakes, this has been a watery summer. I took this picture of Lake Michigan and the Chicago skyline on a particularly idyllic day at Montrose Harbor in July.
Gardens
My little victory garden plot is doing well so far. This is the first year I’ve harvested more than one cucumber, but squash is still a bust. Here’s a sunflower that grew from a seed I started in March, finally showing her face.

This sunflower is peeking out from behind her fingers.
The Loop
A new gig has taken me downtown more often this summer, which allows for old signage sightings like this one.
Monarch Butterflies
I’ve seen more milkweed than ever in my neighborhood, and this year, that seemed to directly correlate to an uptick in monarch butterfly sightings. There were at least three in the community garden the day I took this picture, and I was seeing at least one a day for a while.
Midwestern Goodness
The middle of the country gets a lot of flack, sometimes for justifiable reasons, but look at this landscape. Summer in the midwest means wildflowers, and sunshine, and cherries, and living outside, and birdwatching, and jumping into lakes. It means nature trails, and red-hot pavement, and sliced melon from the fruit stand, and the bells ringing on the ice cream carts. It’s a good place to be in the summer.