Planets come. Planets go. That makes them both confounding and so much fun.
To keep hold of a planet and become friends for life you first have to identify it. These days that's pretty easy with star apps and online guides, including this one, to help point you in the right direction. But the key to "knowing" a planet is keeping track of where it is.
They move, after all. So once you've identified say, Venus, if you return to view it week after week, month after month, you'll soon have its motion in your bones and be able to anticipate its every move. I've been watching Earth's siblings for decades and they've taught me a lot about how the solar system works.
They've also kept me connected to the sky and nature and added beauty to my life. I can't count how many alignments, called conjunctions, I've seen that just make me go "wow." Because the sun, moon and planets all travel the same highway in the sky, the ecliptic, every planet must necessarily spend some time out of view when it passes in the same line of sight as the sun.
At those times it's in the daytime sky and invisible. That's the story with Venus, which has been lost to view in the dazzle of daylight for the past few months. Finally, in August it moves far enough to the east of the sun to partially escape its glare.
Although still low in the west-northwest sky at dusk, the brightest of the planets is now quite easy to spot in binoculars 20-30 minutes after sunset. You can even see it without optical aid as long as .