Plan next summer’s list of fun activities

If the date failed to serve as a reminder, the recent snap in the air was hard to miss. The sun has set on another summer.

Every autumn seems to come earlier, this year maybe more so after spending so much of 2020 cooped up.

Now the tomato plants are fading, and my neighbor is airing out his hunting blinds for the coming deer season. As of this morning, fall is officially here.

At every summer’s close, I make a mental list of missed opportunities, pledging to do better next time.

This year, in a desperate grab for some accountability, I decided to write some of them down. This is not — I repeat not — a to-do list of all the summer projects I did not finish (or even begin). If someone makes a strong argument that replacing window screens is a fun summertime activity, I might reconsider. Until then, no chores will appear on this list.

If you feel similarly inspired and are willing to share your list or even one item from it, let me know.

In the meantime, here’s mine. Next summer, I pledge to:

Eat more sweet corn.

Nothing makes me as in-the-moment happy as sweet corn, although I’m told the experience of watching me devour it is not half as delightful. Imagine a beaver on amphetamines, and you get the general idea.

I don’t care what I look like. Sweet corn might be the perfect summer food, yet every year I take it for granted and buy it only intermittently. Then the day comes, always too soon, when I glance over at the Witten Farm Market near our house and realize that sweet corn is gone for another year.

Spend more time in the hammock.

At the very least, I need to spend more time reclining in the hammock than moving it out of the way of the lawnmower.

A few years ago, I received as a gift an elaborate contraption called a sky chair. Because it is easier to get into and out of the sky chair, it receives more use at our house than the hammock.

But hammocks demand a commitment to leisure, and with the world the way it is today, 30 minutes of leisure is not unreasonable for any of us.

Use the darn canoe.

Several years ago, I restored the canoe I’d owned since my teens. Last summer, we didn’t take it out once, although my lousy back gave me a good excuse.

But thanks to the skilled staff at Ohiohealth Riverside Methodist Hospital, the back problems were remedied last fall.

This year’s excuse was lame, and the same one that I use for everything: There’s not enough time. Which is true for all of us, and all the more reason to take a slow paddle in the family canoe.

Hold the Second Annual Summer Reading Challenge.

My kids were voracious readers when they were younger, but the teen years have a way of separating children from books. This was my attempt to remedy that. It was modestly successful.

My daughter was the clear winner. I came in a distant second. My son, in a last-ditch attempt to get on the board, spent the last Sunday afternoon of the summer reading.

He picked the wrong book, though. Frank Herbert’s “Dune” is not exactly a quick read.

But it was good to see him in the hammock. tdecker@dispatch.com @Theodore_decker