The art of summer

The other night I came home and found a purple pail sitting by the sidewalk steps.  It’s not something that’s usually there but when I peered inside I saw it was full of big pieces of colored chalk.  I didn’t think much of it until later in the evening when I saw two of the neighborhood girls drawing hopscotch squares on the sidewalk.  Again, I didn’t think much of it….until the next morning.  As I headed out the door for an early morning walk I was thrilled to find that the entire sidewalk on our block had been covered with artwork.  These industrious young girls had taken their chalk and drawn a meandering path the length of the block and had numbered each square.  In some sections the blocks have different shapes and are sometimes side by side.  But each and every block is numbered, starting at #1 and ending at #600.  I was delighted to see such creative artwork right at our front steps!  Although many of us adults wouldn’t think to do what these girls did, they certainly enjoyed this project.  It made me think back to the summers of my childhood when I spent countless hours on my bicycle, afternoons spent at the swimming pool in our neighborhood, or the days spent tying together the white flowers from the clover to make a clover chain that stretched from my house to my girlfriend’s house.  I flourished and grew up in those summers, and only now appreciate them for all the experiences I’ve carried with me into my adulthood.  So to these neighborhood girls I say “thanks – you’ve shared a child’s joy of summer and art with our entire neighborhood.”

9 thoughts on “The art of summer

  1. Beth August 22, 2011 / 8:37 am

    Very nice; conjures up memories of my youth and the games we played that did not include batteries or a plug in.

    • lindastaatsphoto August 22, 2011 / 4:56 pm

      And remember the games we made up? Simpler times then, perhaps.

  2. joani August 22, 2011 / 11:05 am

    I think it is worth finding the artists. Oh sometimes to be a child again. They say when you stop doing that you grow old. That kind of graffiti is cool.

    • lindastaatsphoto August 22, 2011 / 4:58 pm

      Then lets all remain children at heart (and that means keep doing your art!)

  3. Linda Yoo August 22, 2011 / 12:30 pm

    Also love the guy walking the dog. Looks a little like Nathan….

    • lindastaatsphoto August 22, 2011 / 4:57 pm

      He adds some life to the photo for sure. Summer is a great time to be in Minnesota!

  4. Melinda August 22, 2011 / 2:02 pm

    I had totally forgotten about clover chains. Your post even brought the smell of the fresh clover, alfalfa field and the summer sounds.

    • lindastaatsphoto August 22, 2011 / 4:55 pm

      Yes, I too had forgotten about clover chains until this time. Glad the memories and even the smells all came back!

  5. Ilona September 4, 2011 / 8:49 pm

    Love this Linda!

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.