Today is the first of June, the first day of the month I love best in all the year. I love it for its mild days – long days when the predawn twilight starts to brighten a 4:00 a.m. and the evening twilight linger until 10:00 p.m. Those twilight hours in the early morning and late evening are my favorite hours of the day. I love the subtle light. I love June for the lushness of the green and growing world. The first glorious flowers of spring have passed – the crocuses, daffodils, and tulips are long gone. Now in their place we have the more regal blooms of peonies, roses, and irises. The lilacs are still lingering and soon the mock oranges will flower. Along the roads and in the meadows the fragrant wild phlox are blooming, one of my favorite wild flowers.
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| The woodland garden on the 1st of June. |
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| Wild phlox. |
Monday was Memorial Day. We went to the parade in Ulysses in the morning. Josiah marched in the band. I spent most of the day planting my gardens. In the afternoon we had our first cook out of the year over at the Shillig’s – hot dogs and hamburgers with all the fixings, pasta salad, baked beans, and homemade ice cream. I love cook out food.
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| The Memorial Day parade in Ulysses. |
I didn’t get all my planting done on Monday. In fact, I worked on it every day last week and finally finished yesterday. Josiah helped me with a lot of it, putting up fences for the cucumbers and tomatoes and putting down mulch. I planted green beans, carrots, beets, chard, pumpkins, winter squash, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, basil, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, dahlias, and gladioli. So everything is in the ground now. My 2014 garden is on its way.
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| Peppers in their boxes. |
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| Garden #2 planted. |
I checked my orchard yesterday. Every tree that bloomed has set fruit. It looks good. I saw no caterpillars or any other insect damage. I’m hoping that our severe winter cold killed off most of the Japanese beetle larva so they won’t be so big a pest this summer. I’ll know that in the next week or two when they are due to emerge.
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| The orchard. |
Hannah is done with school now. Her last day of classes was last Wednesday. On Friday she went on the Senior Class Picnic to Letchworth State Park up in New York State. Tomorrow she’s going on her Senior Class Trip to Hershey Park. On Friday she will graduate. School is out for everyone on Thursday.
It looks like our little dog Pancho won’t be with us much longer. His health has been declining over the last few weeks. He has cataracts in both eyes. He’s hard of hearing. Most of his teeth have fallen out, which is common for a shih-tzu his age. Because of his lack of teeth, he has trouble eating. We’ve tried different soft foods for him, but he doesn’t like them. Because he won’t eat, he has become very thin and doesn’t have much energy. He sleeps most of the time. We have to carry him outside. He’s 15 years old. It’s hard to see him fade away like this. He has been such a big part of our family for so many years.
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| Pancho resting in the sun with dishes of food to tempt him to eat. |
Today was our Stake Conference and, thanks to the internet, we didn’t have to drive all the way to Palmyra (a five hour round trip for us) to attend. Technology is such a blessing. So we’re home now and it is a glorious spring afternoon. After lunch I think I hear the hammock beckoning me for a nap.
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| Cows in the pasture next to Shillig's yard. |
