Did you ever read "A Child's Garden of Verses"?

[mia]

It was my favorite book of as a young child.
Do you remember when you first noticed the changing of light?

Bed in Summer
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

[murielm99]

1. I remember that poem.

My parents did not make us go to bed before dark in the summer. Unless we had to get up early the next day for Sunday school, vacation Bible school, day camp, or some other event, they let us stay up later in the summer. I never could sleep if they sent us to bed before dark. It was a lost cause.

[mia]

4. The time just before dark was a magical time to be outside in the summer.

Loved seeing the lightening bugs..

[csziggy]

15. Not in Florida - dusk is when the mosquitoes come out

Unless we were hanging out to play in the mists from the spray trucks, we were inside to keep from being sucked dry.

[applegrove]

2. I would move my bed to the window (i was always reorganizing the furniture in my room).

I had these little china baby animals i gave names to. They all had personalities. I would have my windows open to the screen and would play with the animals on the window sills. My mom got them from a patient of hers and gave them to me. When i got too old for them i gave them to a neighbour's child. They were so cute. Like beanie babies before beanie babies even existed. Ah summer nights. The noise of the bugs outside. Loved it.

That book sounds familiar though I never read it we may have had it.

[mia]

3. I still have my tiny, white and blue, china kittens and puppies from childhood.

I never played with them on a windowsill with the changing of light and the sounds of bugs outside.
Thanks for the imagery. Beautiful!

[applegrove]

5. Awe. Nice to have such memories eh? My animals were the colour

right for the animal. There was a fawn i called Farrah, a squirl, fox, a bunny, i think a cat and I think a bear. There were about ten of them. Lately I've been wondering if they were not things you collected when you bought something like tea. It was the 70s afterall. But i have no idea. I looked online and could not find them. They were halfway between real life depictions of baby animals and cartoonish.

[LisaM]

9. Your memory sounds like a poem

It's so evocative, it brings back the moment in an unbelievably descriptive way.

[Rhiannon12866]

6. Yes, not only did I have the book, but I memorized several of the poems

[redwitch]

7. Me too!

Mine had lovely illustrations. It was a Christmas gift from my mom and dad and I read it over and over.

[Rhiannon12866]

8. I also remember the illustrations, I read that book over and over

I don't know where I got it from, likely from my parents, my aunt (who was always buying me books) or my grandmother - who was also big on books since she was a teacher.

And sometime before I turned 7, we moved from Albany to Ticonderoga - for my father's job. I remember my Dad told me that I needed to be able to spell Ticonderoga before we moved there (I was 6!). And when my grandmother told her friend about our move, she referenced another Robert Louis Stephenson poem by the same name - and gave her a book with the poem in it. Have you ever read that one?? It's about the American Revolution, I think, definitely not for children! But I memorized that poem too!

[redwitch]

13. I don't know that one but will look it up.

Thanks!

[piddyprints]

10. Yes!

My mom gave it to my kids when they were babies. That’s my favorite poem in the book and I memorized it immediately and think about it when the time changes every year.

[Scrivener7]

11. I was given the book when I was seven and had an illness that lasted for many months.

The Land of Counterpane is another poem I remember well from those months.

[Wahyee]

12. My mom read to us from that book a lot when we were little

I read one of the poems from it at her funeral.

[AwakeAtLast]

14. There are some beautiful choral arrangements for children's choir!

The Swing, for one. So charming to hear young singers in harmony, singing those words.

[SharonClark]

16. Memorized it and can still recite some poems

60 years later. I’m Scottish so we also had Scottish Chiefs and a book of fairy tales.

[RobinA]

17. I Well Remember

that poem, because we had that book and those children in the poem were us. We went to bed before dark for many years. Our bedroom was on the front of the house, so we could hear people outside. I will never forget that.