*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

By the way, you forgot sunburn and ticks...

Wikipedia: Dog days

The term "Dog Days" was used by the Greeks (see, e.g., Aristotle's Physics, 199a2), as well as the ancient Romans (who called these days caniculares dies (days of the dogs)) after Sirius (the "Dog Star"), the brightest star in the heavens besides the Sun.

Popularly believed to be an evil time "when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies" - Brady's Clavis Calendarium, 1813.

The Dog Days originally were the days when Sirius, the Dog Star, rose just before or at the same time as sunrise (heliacal rising), which is no longer true owing to precession of the equinoxes. The ancients sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of the Dog Days to appease the rage of Sirius, believing that that star was the cause of the hot, sultry weather.

The Old Farmer's Almanac lists the traditional timing of the Dog Days as the 40 days beginning July 3 and ending August 11, coinciding with the ancient heliacal (at sunrise) rising of the Dog Star, Sirius.
According to The Book of Common Prayer (1552), the "Dog Daies" begin on July 6 and end on August 17.

But wandering down country lanes kicking up showers of fallen leaves/watching the first flowers bloom/seeing the first snowflakes are just as good

If I had to pick one though it would be early autumn.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

But simply pulling on the shorts and paddling out to the patio with a latte on a summer morning (bypassing the shower till later) is my idea of bliss.

You can't be me, I'm taken

Finnish darts is played with a bulls-eye board with 10 concentric rings (points 1 - 10), 5 darts and  longer throwing distance than the UK game - with the stand-line usually some natural feature. The longer throw often requires a different over-shoulder throw. Games are usually 'beat the last score or lose a life', either individually or in teams.

You can't be me, I'm taken

But I remember the summers of the 80s which were lovely in terms of being warm and sunny without being opporsively hot. We don't have terrible problems with smog or insects here.

But if you live in s Europe, say spain or Italy then really you can write off the summer as just being unbearable. I don't know about Italy but S Spain is more accurately described as N Sahara.

So proper summers are fun, but that's england...not too hot, not too cold...just right.

keep to the Fen Causeway

I still hate all the other parts of summer.  It remains my least favorite time of year.  I've written of some of the debilitating effects of summer in the OT. :)

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.