Of all the photos I took this summer, this “leaning shack of Wheaton” best captures our first summer in Wheaton/Silver Spring/Montgomery County/Maryland/DC area.
- It’s outdoors.
- It’s local, from Wheaton’s wonderful Brookside Gardens.
- It shows storm damage. We had three storm-induced power cuts this summer: 54 hours, 24 hours, 4 hours.
I regard summer as over, since MoCo schools have restarted. Maddie started first grade yesterday.
Moco outdoor pools have gone into post-season mode, which means that they aren’t open on weekdays. We could really use them this week, with temperatures heading up towards 100, but I guess that many of the outdoor pool staff have gone back to high school, and that it was impossible to know very far ahead that this week would be hotter than most of the earlier part of August.
Post-season ends, and the outdoor pools close until next year (June?) after Labor Day. For someone who grew up outside this country, the status of Labor Day as a hard end of summer is even more amazing than spelling Labor without a u. It seems particularly silly when it comes to closing swimming pools in this climate.
That said, we had a good summer, and we’re having a good time as summer turns to autumn (all right then, fall).