Glorious June

May departed with a bit of drama – wind, rain, thunderstorms, rainbows, and even a bit of hail. On Tuesday, just as I arrived at the barn to do the afternoon chores, it began to pour. Our barn has a metal roof and I was in the upper part where the feed and straw are stored. The rain pounding on the roof was amazingly loud – a nice sound. Then after a moment, it began to hail. The noise was deafening. I sat down on a straw bale and looked out through the open loft door and watched the hail fall, engulfed in the sound of it. I enjoyed it, but it freaked the chickens out. It let up after twenty minutes and I proceeded to do the chores.

Between storms.

Now with the coming of June we have arrived at what I hold to be the most beautiful days in all the year. Some may contend that October is more beautiful with its autumn leaves. I also love the beauty of the fall, but it’s a sad sort of beauty born of death and encroaching cold. Besides, when your favorite color is green, you really can’t beat June. June is a jungle month of rampant, very green growth. And I prefer the red of poppies and the orange of nasturtiums to the red and orange of fall leaves. The glory of June is all about light. The length of daylight in June stretches to a glorious fifteen hours and twenty minutes in the twenty-four hour day – and that’s just from official sunrise to sunset and doesn’t include the lovely long twilight hours at dawn and dusk.

Life loves light and the light in June brings abundant life. The garden is at it’s best. There isn’t much in the way of ripe fruit or vegetables yet, they come with the mature days of late summer and early fall, but June is all about youthful lushness and growth. It is a month for flowers not fruit – except for the strawberries we’ll eat at the end of the month – which makes it even better. The late spring flowers linger on in June and the early summer flowers appear. There are still a few lilacs, bluebells, forget-me-nots, and Johnny-jump-ups, but now as they fade they are succeeded by lupine, columbine, larkspur, peonies, irises, cornflowers, and poppies. Along the roadsides and in the wild corners of my yard the fragrant wild phlox are blooming. I think they are most beautiful of all our wild flowers.

Late lilacs.

The last of the bluebells.

In my garden the lupines and columbines are in full bloom now. The irises, cornflowers, and poppies have just begun to bloom. The peonies and larkspur are starting to bud. In the woodland garden the ferns are fresh, the woodruff is sweet, and the lovely pink woodland azalea is in bloom. I knew before I even saw it that the azalea was flowering. One evening last week I caught the scent of its perfume from across the yard. In June I always regret that I did not plant fifty woodland azaleas instead of one.

Lupines.

Dark red columbine.

White columbine.

The first of the cornflowers.

The first poppy.

Wild phlox.

My pink woodland azalea.

In the vegetable garden, the beets, carrots, and lettuces are coming along nicely. I only grow head lettuce. I don’t like limp leaf lettuce. Lettuce has to crunch. I know the popular trend is to castigate iceberg lettuce, but it is my favorite. Unfortunately, it’s a bit tricky to grow the huge heads sold in the markets. I grow smaller heading lettuces – buttercrunch, tennis ball, and romaine. They take longer than the limp leaf lettuces, but it’s worth the wait.

Carrots and lettuce.

I did more planting last week. All my summer flowers are planted now – zinnias, marigolds, cosmos, and scabious. In the vegetable garden, I planted seeds of squash (Baby Blue Hubbard), pumpkins (Winter Luxury), zucchini (Costata Romanesca and Tromboncino), and cucumbers (National Pickling and Marketmore). I also planted beans from seed – dry beans (Midnight Black Turtle) and green beans (Super Marconi). I planted out my basil, celery, and parsley plants. The only things left to plant now are tomatoes and peppers and I will do that this week. Then I will sit back and watch it all grow. Well, maybe in a perfect world I would. Actually I will spend a lot time keeping the weeds and pests at bay.

Little green apples.

Meanwhile, down at the barn . . . There will be some excitement this week. The new chicks are big enough now to be combined with the main flock. Tomorrow I will open their pen and let them out into the big coop. There will be lots of drama. The big chickens have been watching the chicks through the fence for weeks. They know who they are. But there is a strict pecking order in the flock. The chicks have their own little pecking order amongst themselves. When the chicks join the flock there will be lots of commotion as everyone jostles to find their place in the new pecking order. The newcomers will be lowest in the order, of course. There will be considerable bullying. Chickens are great bullies. They don’t show anything like compassion for each other. It will take a few days for everyone to adjust. Then calm should prevail at the barn once again.

The young chicks.

The Pisters, our nephew Stephen and his wife Erin, were here for a short visit this weekend. For the last few years they have lived up in Fredonia, New York, about two hours from here and we got see them fairly often. They are moving to Davenport, Iowa, now and came by on their way west to say good-bye. They arrived on Friday evening and left yesterday after a late breakfast. It was nice having them live so close by. We will miss them.

Good-bye to the Pisters.

This weekend was our stake conference. For the last few years, the stake has broadcast the meetings to the distant branches via the internet, which is a huge blessing for us. A drive to Palmyra and back again means five hours in the car for us. They broadcast the meeting last night and Stacey and I went up to our chapel to watch it. But for some reason they decided not to broadcast the session today. That was unfortunate because it meant many members of our branch couldn’t or wouldn’t attend. Stacey and I did not attend. We budget one trip to Palmyra per month and reserve that as a trip to the temple. We just went to the temple last week. And if we use our June trip for stake conference, that means no temple trip in June. So we stayed home today with no church meeting. It feels odd not going to church on the Sabbath. I have a long queue of Mormon Tabernacle Choir music playing and we spent extra time reading the scriptures, but the day still seems odd. I hope the stake decides to resume broadcasting meetings in the future.

It is chilly and rainy today. The house feels cold. In an optimistic moment, we turned the furnace off last week. It is June after all. Who needs to run their furnace in June? We do apparently. I could make a fire in the wood stove, but that would mean a trip to the woodpile in the rain and all the fuss and smoke. We haven’t fired up the wood stove for weeks now. No, I just put on a sweater. Lunch is almost ready and I look forward to something warm to eat. I hope the rain stops before I have to go down to do the afternoon chores. I don’t want to be wet and cold.