Hot soup on a hot day?

The drumsticks started it. I opened the fridge around noon and there they were staring up at me, their skin brown and black and rippled from last night's grilling.
Soup, they whispered.
No way, I replied. It's, like, 85 degrees out, and I want to go swimming.
So do we, they said. Soooooup.
I closed the door, but it didn't work.
Soup, soup, soup, soup, soup, soup, soup.
All right already. But did I mention that I suck at making soup.
About the only soup I can make with some reliability is matzo ball, and that's only because after I had children my genes threatened to divorce me if I didn't learn. And although I've mastered the prefect fluff of golden goodness, my broth is only tasty about half the time and, truth be told, I always throw in a few cubes of Knorrs chicken bouillon for luck. No, soup is not my thing.
The drumsticks were unmoved.

OK, OK, OK. I tried to think of something cold, but the only thing I could conjure was a blender of gazpacho, and somehow 10 leftover drumsticks and no tomatoes didn't seem like a good place to start. So I tried to remember a time when I enjoyed hot soup in the summer. Ahhh, there was that trip to the The Cape. I was pregnant (as in waddling and swollen) with my first child. My husband and I took off to Provincetown for a few days as a final get away. I was a cliché and I didn't care. After several months of morning (read all day) sickness, I could finally eat again and the only thing I wanted was to walk into some under lit, air-conditioned room hanging with rope and anchors and eat lobster, steamed and dripping with butter. It was a few days before my husband could drag me away from the seashelled walls and into a small Portuguese restaurant with decent lighting. My husband loves sausage and I love kale so we both ordered bowls of house soup, which arrived steaming with soft potatoes, greens and chorizo. The broth was rich with a hint of heat. If our marriage was a soup this might have been it, unlikely and earthy combinations that worked.
I opened the fridge again. I had a beautiful bunch of lacinato kale from the morning's trip to the Troy Farmers' Market. There was also a Tupperware full of leftover Israeli couscous that had played sidekick to the grilled chicken. On the counter was a loaf of Rock Hill bread that would make for great dunking. Huuummmmm.
I took the meat off of six of the drumsticks and set it aside. The remaining four drumsticks and the six naked bones went into a pot of water with an unskinned clove of elephant garlic and a bay leaf. I let it cook down for most of the afternoon. Around 4 p.m., I drained the broth and added a few cups of chicken broth to stretch it (and because I can't quite give up on the Knorrs.) I tossed in chunks of baby Yukon Gold potatoes and the cut-up chicken pieces and let it reach a soft boil.
Next, I heated some olive oil in a sauté pan and threw in some crushed red pepper and then a diced Vidalia onion. When it was sweating, I added the kale in small ribbons. After the kale had cooked down a bit, I sprinkled the vegetables with ground sage -- I don't why, but the chicken legs insisted on it -- let the herb take for a few minutes and then poured the veggies into the soup. I added the lumps of clumped together Israeli couscous and turned the whole thing down to low. An hour later, I took it off the heat and let the soup rest. Around 7 in the evening, there was a soft breeze and I thought I just might get away with it.
I served the soup with the toasted bread. I looked around the table at my three children and my husband. It worked.