I wake up these days before five AM, to daylight and the lilting greeting of dozens of songbirds. It is a little early for me, but at least it isn’t dark and cold!
I have curled up on my couch and asleep by 9:30Pm, and it is still light outdoors.
This is the gentlest, kindness, most forgiving of seasons.
But these chapters turn swiftly, and these golden moments will be gone soon. We are less than a month away from the longest daylight day, when the sun imperceptibly starts it trip farther south, robbing daylight a few minutes at a time, even though we will not notice for weeks while summer generously shares its warmth and sunlight.
Every day I swim and watch the boss work from the shade. Only a couple weeks ago, we had snow showers, and just a couple days ago, there was frost in the low ground every morning! We check anxiously for buds and new leaves, but nothing. Then suddenly we have blossoms!
I am a high speed, high octane, fast-moving Heeler – but I cannot grab hold of the rapid cycles our days fly through!
When we finally get nice weather in this northern land, there are hundreds of jobs to start and to finish before snow flies again.
So much has to be compressed into the long days.
Perhaps in the south, the same urgency applies to the winter, before the inferno returns. I do remember my days lost in the Sonoran Desert. My paws burned, but at least I didn’t have to trail cows!
Here, the boss makes lists and tackles it all as well as her old bones can manage. I watch her work, more slowly every year. Maybe I should nip her heels to rev her up a bit?
Yet even I, still young I think, feel that ache in my joints, caused by time whistling through too fast!
There are piles of stuff I tell you! Piles of junk to get thrown and hauled. Piles of plants to be pulled, cut, burned. I am mercifully free of those hamster wheels running through midnight brains, adding to an endless to-do list.
Still, how does a cowdog accomplish it all in the space of summer, yet still enjoy all the pleasures this wide season offers: swimming, fishing, camping?
Whatever your season brings, with days whizzing by, make sure they count. When I wake up each morning, I realize it isn’t just one more day – it is in fact one less day in this world. Savor the chapters slowly. Here comes summer – don’t miss it! 
The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
Song of Solomon 2:12
