Summer

It's everywhere, and well it should be!  I can feel it in the warmth of the air as I walk down the shady arbor.  It's in the way the leaves glow in the sunlight and the light rustling sound they share with me.  It's in the smell of sunscreen and mowed lawns as well as the seemingly endless length of the day.

Summer is also present in the streetscape.  Summer fashion is radiant with variations depending on age, personality, finances, nationality and workplace.  All you have to do is sit on one of wooden benches in the central Esplanad Park downtown, and you will have a front-row seat to the summer catwalk.  Tourists, bankers, bums, teens, street artists, immigrants, babies, visitors--you name it!  Some ladies have taken to the maxi dress.  Some teens have opted for the mini shorts.  Beer bellies can't seem to go out of fashion and neither does too-tan skin.  Freckles, hippie hair and flip-flops abound.  Babies with adorable hats get shown off in prams and joggers are everywhere.

But one must remain aware of summer's pests as well, and I don't just mean the mosquitoes! Tourist cameras have powerful zooms (beware of paparazzi).  Sea gulls terrorize those accessorized with ice cream and can-collectors might take your coke or beer can even before you have sipped your last! And if you wait for it to get dark before you lay your head on your pillow, you may only get a few winks per night!

All in all though, I'll take summer's glorious gamut of pests, spectacles, fashion and landscapes any day!  And my vacation begins after tomorrow, so perhaps you will spot me in your cityscape one of these days! :)

Seasonal Sighting

The February chill has ushered in the use of the Fur Hat.  Today, a parade of rare and beautiful specimens in varying stages of bushy-ness came riding into our shop, mostly on the heads of elderly white-haired gentlemen.  They perched regally over spectacles and moved deliberately through the aisles.  The rarest sighting was actually not a hat, but a cap, completing the attire of a cute old man that just made me smile with his deep wrinkles and hunched posture.  I had to stop mid-sentence to observe him walk past, looking this way and that, wherever that cap wanted to go.

So just make sure that this February chill doesn't keep you indoors, missing the prime season for catching glimpses of the Fur Hat.  Go turn a few corners before this rare breed hides from March's rising temperatures and hibernates until the next arctic winter sets in.  Caution: if proximity to a Fur Hat makes you fearful, beware of coming into close contact with one in very cold weather, and especially beware of trying to put one on in sub-zero temperatures.  Chances are, you won't get him off!