Beginning of summer

Summer has been treating me well the past four days.
It has included: Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Coldplay, The Civil Wars, clothes shopping, journal writing, knitting, book shopping (got me a book of John Keats poetry! life = made), Pinterest obsession, outfit making, popcorn, Powerade, Leave it to Beaver, Matt Bomer, sitting at home, good food, coffee, cheese danishes, train whistles, thunderstorms, and clicking fans. If the rest of summer is at least this awesome, I'll have it made.
Summer has some kind of a strange beauty to it. It's almost mysterious, but in a careless sort of way. Summer most definitely doesn't have the mystery that autumn has, but it has sort of a throw-it-to-the-wind feel about it, filled with acoustic guitars and thunder as percussion. It's truly a lovely time when I get to lean back and relax. Or at least until I realize I have Algebra 2 and Chemistry all summer. bluh.
I love the magic summer seems to hold. Staying up until one in the morning listening to the sound of the train and reading a bit of Dickens while hearing the fan click like one from the 50s would. Wearing shorts and doing cartwheels in the backyard. Swinging at a random park. Having lovely weather in the South for once, and wishing the whole summer would stay in the lovely 60s-80s range it has remained in the past few weeks. Seeing the first firefly. Each blast of wind, each crack of thunder, each small chirp of a cricket seems to hold some special, chill magic that only summer has. No other season has that beautiful feel of woods and fields and camping and crickets that summer has. I can't quite describe it, but somehow summer reminds me of those magical, hazy days of childhood that you only see in a 70s, summer-hue tinted view. It's truly beautiful, and it makes me want to lay under a pine tree hear the lap of waves from a lake slap the mud walls.
Although I do have those lovely views of childhood in my mind, memories of swings and sun-dappled pine trees and green grass, I am creating new 70s-hue summer memories in my mind. Memories of running down the street with my best friends, joking about dumping people in the lake, swimming at the pool, reading Dickens books with a cup of tea while rain spits at the window... these things are my new sun-dappled summer memories. Summer is magical. It's innocent. It's carefree and lovely. It's coral shorts and open-lace sweaters. It's Joshua Radin and Coldplay and Allen Levi. It's lemonade and picking tomatoes out of the garden. It's snapping pictures in the hot summer sun. It's eating ice cream on the back porch with my mom or getting an iced chai tea latte at Starbucks with her.
What can I say? It's summer. It's that lovely sun drenched, 70s, rounded corners photograph of a memory that I have in my head. It's perfect.