Written by Kyran Pittman of Planting Dandelions, Arkansas Women Bloggers Miss August 2013

Outdoor temperatures have finally climbed into the triple digits, and our house has descended into the zombie zone – I’ve stopped counting the hours my kids have been staring at screens or nagging them about exercise and fresh air. We have become nocturnal creatures, hardly moving by day, venturing to the pool only at night.

I’m okay with it. What’s an Arkansas summer without moaning about the heat? Until this past week, it’s been extraordinarily temperate since the kids got out of school. I’m kind of exhausted from seizing each glorious day.

In my seventeen years of living in Arkansas, I’ve learned that summer in the South is something to be endured—much like the deep Canadian winters of my youth. You hunker indoors and wait it out. But even our typically extreme summer has its charms, perhaps precisely because it is an endurance test. That which does not kill us, makes us stronger. And sweatier. We come through it together.

Until I spent a summer in Arkansas, I never knew what a peach, or a watermelon, or a fig should be. I never heard the riot of cicadas at night. I didn’t appreciate the pleasure of being forced to slow down. I spent a month in eastern Canada last summer, and the ambient drive to do things and go places was a shock to my transplanted soul. I had forgotten that northern summers march to the beat of go, go, go.

But the very best thing about our summers is how much they make me appreciate the other three seasons of the year in Arkansas. In another couple of months, we will be well into fall. What used to be a melancholy—if beautiful—season in the north, is here a welcome return to outdoor living. Our fall foliage doesn’t have the vivid scarlet streak of New England’s autumn palette, but our burnished golds and fiery oranges are nearly as breathtaking. Without the shadow of hard winter close behind them, our colors seem content to glow warmly, rather than rage splendidly against a dying light.

When the last leaf has fallen, we have what passes for winter. Having grown up with northern winters, I can’t say I miss them much. I love the nip in the air that’s just frosty enough for a costume change. Out come the tights and sweaters, though it’s never safe to put all the warm weather clothes away. I argue all winter long with boys about going to school in shorts and no jacket, but they haven’t had frostbite yet. The rare time it does snow, I get to become a child again. Snow loses its charm when you have to shovel it and drive through it month after month as an adult, but here, everything stops. No one expects daily life to go on when snow is on the ground. We suspend everything and rush out to make our short-lived snowmen.

Then all of sudden, just before the low light of winter begins to feel old, the world is bursting with spring. Really, Arkansas spring could stand to tone it down a little. It’s way over the top, just short of talking animals and spontaneous musical numbers. Also, the pollen. I never thought I could be mad at vegetation, but come ON, oak trees. Get a room.

And tornado warnings, I could do without.

Sinuses and sirens aside, springtime in Arkansas is glorious. From the dogwoods of March to the magnolias of May, it’s a vision. Drinks on the porch, blossoms on the trees, mint in my glass, and something sizzling on the grill. Spring is one long garden party.

Until the heat turns up, and it becomes disco inferno again. Burn, baby, burn.

What’s your favorite season in Arkansas?