Happy Friday, Summerville!

We're past the first-week-of-school adrenaline and excitement now and into the part that's just the routine. What helps as we get into the nitty gritty of the school year is having something on the calendar that isn't a school event! This week we've got a brand-new county park that opened over the summer and a pollinator festival at Ashley River Park with food trucks and inflatables. We also have details about the upcoming father-daughter dance the Summerville YMCA puts on as well as Japanese festival happening soon right in downtown Summerville.

Enjoy!!

P.S. Worth knowing before you load everyone in the car: the Saul Alexander playground on South Laurel is closed Monday through Wednesday next week (August 25–27) while the town cleans and recoats it. It should be back open Thursday.

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One thing I keep hearing friends rave about is one of the newest additions to the park scene in the Lowcountry. Charleston County Parks opened Old Towne Creek County Park at the end of June, and I didn't hear about it until weeks after the fact but every time a friend visits I always hear about it.

The 67 acres at 1400 Old Towne Road in West Ashley were a working farm and riding academy for decades. The landscaping there has been many years in progress, so instead of the usual bare, young trees you get at a new park, there are plenty of live oaks that have been standing there a very long time.

For many families the draw is the trail. There's a one-mile loop with a packed stone surface, which is the detail us moms with young kids that may need a wagon or stroller like to know! Off the loop there are boardwalks and a dock with marsh views out over Old Towne Creek, plus an arboretum, a small amphitheater that doubles as an outdoor classroom, and a welcome center in a restored building the park calls the Rain Hut.

There's also a playground, which is the part that actually decides whether my two will get back in the car willingly. It's built with nature-inspired, accessible play elements rather than the standard plastic tower, so it should feel different from the ones they've memorized.

Admission is $2 per person, free for kids 2 and under and for Gold Pass holders. Through August the park is open 8am to 8pm, and from September it shifts to 8am until sunset. Dogs are welcome on a leash. It's roughly 35 to 40 minutes from downtown Summerville, and it sits directly across Old Towne Road from Charles Towne Landing, so you could reasonably make a morning of both.

We haven't made it out there yet — it's on our list for a cooler Saturday. If you’ve been already and have a favorite part of the park, let us know!

Pollinator Festival
Saturday, August 22 | 10am–2pm | Ashley River Park | Free with park admission ($2 per person, ages 3 and up)

Dorchester County Parks has built a whole festival around the pollinator count, and it looks like a good one for little kids! There will be vendor booths, hands-on crafts for all ages, food trucks, ice cream and inflatables. Local experts are coming out too, including master naturalists and a bat biologist — which is the sort of thing my 4-year-old will bring up at dinner for a week.

The centerpiece is the Great Southeast Pollinator Census, a citizen science project run out of the University of Georgia. No experience needed: you watch one plant for a set stretch of time and count the insects that land on it, and those counts get pooled into real regional data. It's about the lowest-barrier science project a small kid can actually take part in. There's also homemade pollinator paper-making, which sounds messy in the best way.

Summerville Japanese Festival
Saturday, August 29 | 12:30-6:30pm | Hutchinson Square | Free entry

Next Saturday, downtown will turn into a festival built around Japanese culture: live dance, music, martial arts, and theatrical performances, plus vendors, games, food trucks, and art and photography from Japan. Martial arts demonstrations tend to hold small kids' attention better than just about anything else at an outdoor festival, and Hutchinson Square is an easy place to let them wander.

Father-Daughter Dance: Under The Sea
Saturday, September 12th | 5-7pm | YMCA at the Ponds | Ticket prices vary

Dads, father figures, and daughters are invited to an under-the-sea evening of dancing and memory-making at The Ponds. Dress up, hit the dance floor, and enjoy ocean-inspired fun and light snacks. It's the kind of special night that sticks with kids long after it’s over! Pricing varies, so check ticket prices and purchase tickets here.

It takes my two-year-old about five minutes to walk from our front door to the car.

The distance is maybe forty feet. But between the door and the car seat there's all bikes in the garage that need to touched, a crack in the driveway with an ant highway running through it, and a downspout that has to be inspected. He stops for every single one. Not glances at — stops, crouches, and reports back.

And most mornings I rush him. We have somewhere to be, or I've decided we do, and I’m repeating myself over and over to keep moving to the van.

Then I was reading about the pollinator festival this week, particularly the part where they hand you a clipboard and you sit and watch one plant and count what lands on it, and it struck me that people will drive across the county and pay admission to do roughly what my two-year-old does for free in our driveway every morning while I stand there trying to rush him to the van.

I don't want to make this bigger than it is. Sometimes you genuinely have to be somewhere, and a toddler studying a downspout at 8:52am isn't a spiritual moment, it's a logistics problem. I'm not going to pretend I've stopped rushing him.

But I've started leaving five extra minutes on the mornings when it's possible. Not every morning. And what I've noticed is that the five minutes aren't really for him. He's fine either way; he's two, he'll look at the ant now or he'll look at it later. The five minutes are so that I'm not the person in the driveway who can't stand still.

Because he's going to grow out of this. My four-year-old already mostly has. He walks to the car now like a man with an agenda, and I couldn't tell you when that changed. It just did, somewhere in the last year, while I was busy being relieved about it.

Love,

Courtney, Daniel, and the Berk Boys

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