Summertime, it is hazy, hot and humid, and as a result no one wants to do much gardening. I can't say that I blame them, it is not much fun having to work in this heat. But if you are lucky enough to be on vacation or even just have a couple days off this weather can be really nice.

Now you still don't want to be out on a boat in the middle of the day, as that is a good way to get burnt, but early morning or evening cruises are still enjoyable and the fish bite better in the morning or evening too. One thing everyone can enjoy during these hot days is lemonade.

Tis the season for fresh ice cold lemonade made from scratch not from a can. There is no one recipe for great lemonade and everyone likes it different anyway. Just start with fresh lemons, clean water and then choose which sweetener you like best.

In the past this would be just sugar, but these days stevia makes a good low calorie substitute for sugar. Stevia is available at grocery stores or you can grow it yourself, in fact it is one of the plants that thrive in this heat. If you grow your own you can literally pop a leaf off anytime you want and chew it and you will taste the sweetness.

Another sweetener that can be used is honey. Honey is the original sweetener, dating back as far as we have recorded history. Of course back then it was just gathered from woodland hives as beekeeping was not even thought of all those years ago. Now a days, beekeeping has become one of the fastest growing hobbies in the world. Backyard apiaries are popping up all over, and I can attest as to how addicting beekeeping can be.

We started our hive back up a couple of months ago and it was struggling, so I started to watch some beekeeping videos on Youtube. Fifty or sixty hours of videos later, we have been building our own swarm traps and, if you check out our facebook page, you can see that we caught a bee swarm in one of our traps. So now we have two hives and we are working on more. But I will save our bee exploits for a column later this year.

Back to some sweet lemonade, besides the sweetener, you can add some other flavors to enhance your lemonade. Right now raspberries and blueberries are abundant across the county, strawberries are available almost all summer and some more exotic fruits like currants and gooseberries will be available soon.

You have heard of pink lemonade but how about purple lemonade? Just add black currants to your lemonade and the color from the currants will turn your lemonade purple as well as give it a unique flavor.

There are so many ways to make wonderful cool summer drinks that are both refreshing and good for you. Even if you don't like lemonade you can easily make some fruit infused water by putting fruit slices into a pitcher of water and put it in your refrigerator for a day. The fruit flavors will enhance your water and maybe the kids will drink a little more water than soda.

Either way, it is important to stay hydrated in this heat and more water is the best way to do this.