The weather continued hot and dry for most of the week. Our lawns are brown and crispy. I watered the garden every day trying to keep things from wilting. I did most of my garden work in the mornings and evenings when the temperature was milder. The tiny bit of rain we had, 1/16 of an inch, didn’t help much.
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| June eating a popsicle on the back porch stairs. |
All week long we’ve had great family celebrations. Last Sunday evening we celebrated Wade's 5th birthday. Sarah made him a Captain America cake. We also celebrated Josiah’s 18th birthday, which was really on Tuesday. Rachel made him a strawberry chocolate cake. Dallin’s birthday was on Friday, he turned 14.
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| Birthday cakes. |
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| Josiah getting his birthday spanks from Hazel. |
On Monday, the Pisters arrived – Stacey’s sister Audrey and her husband Karl, Karl’s sister Ann and her husband Blaine, and all of Karl and Audrey’s children – Stephen and his wife Erin, Audrey, Jr., Christopher and his wife Rebecca and their baby Jack, and Emma. That group, added to the rest of the family resident and visiting (the Gold Shilligs, and the Howes residents; the Atwaters, the Thayns, the Fosters, and the Georgia Shilligs visitors), made for a big, happy crowd. Monday night we had dinner around the fire pit and there were 32 family members there, a new record for a fire pit dinner.
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| Monday night's dinner. |
There were more comings and goings on Tuesday. The Atwater family left for home, but our niece Missy (one of Stacey’s sister Roxann’s daughters), arrived to spend a few days with us.
Tuesday morning Karl and Ann, both of them avid gardeners, helped me do some work in the yard. Karl grabbed the stirrup hoe and made short work of the weeds in the fruit garden. Ann weeded the strawberry bed. Then Blaine joined us and we picked black currants.
In the afternoon Stacey took the Pister group on an Amish run. When they got back, we had dinner and then we headed to Palmyra for the Hill Cumorah Pageant. The Georgia Shilligs were already up there, having left earlier in the day to visit the church history sites. Josiah went with them as a guide. Around 7:00 p.m. we all met up at the hill. We took up almost an entire row. The Pageant was amazing, as it always is. When it was over, we had to say some good-byes as most of Pister group left to go to Stephen and Erin’s house over in Fredonia, New York. Ann and Blaine came back to our house to spend the night and then headed back to their home in Maryland on Wednesday morning.
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| At the Hill. |
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| Waiting for the Pageant to start. |
Rachel’s big kitchen project continued to progress through the week. Josiah, Dallin, and Missy were her big helpers. All the kitchen wares – pots, pans, nonperishable food, dishes – were loaded into boxes and stacked in the music room. It was pretty chaotic trying to find things at dinner time. Then there was lots of sanding, scraping, hole filling, more sanding, priming, and painting. We put in a new ceiling light, an LED light to replace the ancient glass globe. We were dazzled by the brightness of the new light. The project wasn’t done when Rachel left for home on Friday morning and took Missy with her. Josiah, Dallin, and I kept working on it all day Friday putting new hinges on cupboard door, new knobs on doors and drawers, putting things away, cleaning things up. It still isn’t completely done, but we’re almost there. The kitchen has been transformed.
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| Rachel working on the kitchen |
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| The new kitchen. |
Despite the heat and dry conditions, we began harvesting some things last week. We picked several batches of black currants. I froze them to make into jelly on some cooler day in the fall. We picked enough juneberries to make a batch of jam in the fall. This is the first time I’ve had a big enough harvest to do that. On Wednesday I dug up my garlic and set it to cure on the back porch. It’s a bit early for garlic, but I think it matured faster because of the heat and lack of rain. The garlic cloves aren’t big, but there are plenty of them. Up the road from us, the blueberries are ripe and we will go picking some time this week. The poppies are at their peak now. Along the roadsides the chicory is in bloom with their beautiful blue flowers.
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| Poppies. |
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| Chicory along the road. |
On Wednesday, the hottest day of the week, we had two bee swarms in the orchard. One only stayed a few minutes and then flew away. The other swarm I managed to capture. It was miserable working in the heat wearing my bee suit. I was dripping sweat and bees don’t like the smell of sweat. I persevered however, and I now have three hives going out by the hazel hedge.
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| Bee swarm. |
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| Capturing the swarm. |
Things are thinning out and quieting down now. The Atwaters are gone. The Pisters have come and gone. Sarah and Tosh left on Thursday morning. Rachel, Hazel, June, and Missy left on Friday morning. The Georgia Shilligs are leaving this Tuesday. As crazy as it gets sometimes when we have visitors, we love being together. And the quiet that comes after the visitors leave is a sad quiet, full of the echoes of family and fun. We have a few more visitors yet to come. Some old friends are stopping by next week to spend the night on their way up to the church sites, and Hannah will be home from school this week and it looks like Daniel and Miriam will be coming for a visit too. Things are bound to liven up again. Even so, departing guests make the summer seem old, and I’m not ready for that.
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| Saying good-bye to the Fosters. |
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| Good-bye to Rachel, Hazel, June, and Missy. |
