Reality check: Summer is on the wane.  We’re just 4 weeks out from Labor Day. I can almost smell the fall leaves and hear the school buses grinding through my neighborhood.

Question: How to squeeze the most juicy goodness out of the summer we’ve got left?

Here’s an idea: Make a list if you haven’t already. A summer fun list.  A reminder of all the things you love about the season and want to savor:

[Summer fun list photo courtesy of Vicky Bright
at Secret Mom Thoughts blog.]

The Spontaneous Summer of Nonstop Endless Fun

Years ago, a roommate and I made a summer list and posted it on our refrigerator. We called it, ambitiously, the Spontaneous Summer of Nonstop Endless Fun.

“You need a list in order to be spontaneous?” came the usual response from visitors who spotted it.

“We’re more likely to do these things if they’re up where we can see them,” we replied.

And it worked. The summer days stretched longer because we paid more attention to the things that made them special: bike rides (without extra layers), outdoor concerts, u-pick strawberries, barbecues and lots of porch time with friends.

The 2010 Waning Days of Summer Fun List

For your consideration, here are some ideas on how to enjoy the last 4 weeks of summer 2010:
 
• Watch meteor showers.  The Perseids make their showy annual visit this Thursday and Friday. [Photo, right, by Jimmy Westlake.]

• Try a new outdoor activity. 2010 will go down as the summer I found my Zen place on a stand up paddleboard.  Fellow REI blogger T.D. Wood climbed his first glacier-covered mountain. What new discoveries are you making this summer?

• Go camping. And yes, your backyard counts. 

• Enjoy outdoor plays, concerts and festivals. Somehow, Shakespeare's less intimidating when you’re sprawled on a blanket in a park. The actors are looser, the jokes are broader, and admission is usually free. [Photo, below, by Deborah Fialkow, courtesy of Seattle Shakespeare Company.]

• Put up gauzy curtains (or a scarf) and enjoy how they waft on the warm summer breeze.

  • Beach reading! (Or any outdoor reading.) Oprah can help with this. Back in June, I plugged some of her (and others’) titles into my public library account. There are waiting lists on most of them, but never mind: Here’s to delayed gratification.

• Choose a signature summer dish. Whenever the temperature passes 80, I love to make gazpacho—huge, unwieldy batches of it. Tomatoes, cucumbers, cilantro – all the best salad ingredients, without the bother of lettuce. 

Carpe diem, my friends.  What’s on your list this summer?  What have you already done, and what are you still planning to do before those school buses start running?