August is here already. How is that possible? It is not one of my favorite months. It’s a sad month for me in many ways. It ushers in the decline of summer. And it always comes too soon. And it passes too quickly. It’s a busy month, and that is good. In August all my unfinished summer projects begin to taunt me and spur me into a frenzy of work. And there are new tasks to tackle as well. There are finally substantial things to harvest from the garden – cucumbers to turn into pickles and relish, broccoli and cauliflower to blanch and freeze, cabbage to begin transforming into sauerkraut. If the weather stays warm, we’ll start picking and processing tomatoes. The first of the apples, the Yellow Transparents and Duchess of Oldenburgs, will be ripe and we’ll begin canning applesauce.
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| Late summer morning. |
By the end of August, school will be in session again and that tinges everything with a sense of melancholy. I suppose that sadness is a holdover from my childhood when the approach of a new school year filled me with anxiety. And when my own children were young I felt empathy for their dread of the approach of school. The times have changed, my children are grown and my relationship to school has gone from student to teacher, but that old anxiety still lurks in my mind as I watch summer slip away.
We had a busy week last week. It was full of fun and work. The weather was good. We felt a little bit of August warmth – at least at first. We had some impressive summer storms with thunder, lightning, and torrential rain. Our big projects were all indoors, so the rain didn’t hamper things much. The biggest project we tackled was finishing the walls in the stairway and upstairs hall. Rachel and Miriam worked on it steadily most of the week. They taped and mudded wallboard, sanded, primed, and painted. Rachel had to leave and the project is not quite done yet. There is still trim to put up and pictures to hang, but Miriam and I will work on that this week.
The other big project that Geoffrey and Daniel began two weeks ago, the upstairs bathroom, is still not done. Geoffrey returned home to Utah and Daniel went to Missouri and then to Detroit and hasn’t come home yet, so the bathroom waits. Part of the delay was waiting for the arrival of the new, insulated toilet. It arrived on Tuesday and Wednesday – the tank on Tuesday and the bowl on Wednesday. The floor still needs to be installed and then the toilet. We’re hoping Daniel will come home during the early part of the week so we can finish it all. We’ve been living with only one toilet in the house, the one downstairs, and it has been inconvenient.
Out in the garden things are starting to look like late summer. I pulled up a lot of spent plants – larkspur and poppies that had finished their annual life cycle, fava beans that were done. It left holes in the garden that will not be filled as there isn’t time to start anything new this year. There is still plenty of color in the flowerbeds with the dahlias and zinnias and my favorite balloon flowers all in bloom. On Friday my friend Stan Atherholt came by to get dill from my garden. He makes delicious pickles every year – 100 quarts of them! – and grows his own cucumbers, but he gets his dill from me. He trades me dill for jars of pickles. I think I get the better end of that deal.
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| Dahlia. |
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| Dahlia. |
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| Balloon flowers. |
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| Balloon flowers. |
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| Dill in my garden. |
We’re picking raspberries now. And out in the meadow we’re picking, and promptly eating, wild huckleberries. I picked a nice broccoli and there are a lot more coming. The cabbages are plumping up. The onions are starting to flop over and I will begin harvesting and curing them this week.
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| Raspberries. |
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| Broccoli. |
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| Cabbage. |
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| Onions. |
On Wednesday we went to the Potter County Fair. Some years we find ourselves saying, “Do we really want to go to the fair this year?” When our children were younger it was exciting to go and see the animals. Some years we entered quilts and vegetables and won ribbons. But we haven’t done that in a long time and our enthusiasm had waned – until this year. We had Hazel and June here and they were very excited to go to the fair. It was a rainy evening and we had to carry umbrellas, but our spirits were not dampened. We went to the exhibits, to the goats and sheep, the rabbits, the cows, the pigs, and the horses. Hazel and June got to ride on two rides – something we never let our own children do – but grandchildren are different. Last of all, we stopped at the taffy booth and bought one of each flavor. On our way home Hazel informed us it was her “Best Day Ever!”
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| On the carousel at the fair. |
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| Petting tiny goats. |
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| Decisions at the taffy stand. |
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| Best day ever! |
On Friday morning Rachel and her girls and Miriam left. They drove down to Pittsburgh to do some house hunting on Friday and Saturday. On Saturday afternoon, Miriam left Rachel and flew from Pittsburgh up to Bradford and arrived back here in the evening. Rachel and her girls are continuing their drive back to their home in Tennessee. While they were in Pittsburgh, Rachel was able to find a home and sign a lease. They will be moving there in September. We are so happy they will be living in the Pittsburgh area just a few hours away from us.
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| Good-bye to Rachel, Hazel, June, and Mabel. |
At the end of the week the weather turned chilly. On Saturday Stacey, Hannah, and I went to the Frosty Hollow Herb Fair where we set up a booth for our barn quilts. We’ve participated in the Herb Fair for three years now. It was a cool and blustery day. We didn’t sell any barn quilts, but have several good prospects.
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| At the Herb Fair. |
The weather is still cool today. The sunshine feels warm when you are standing in it, but the air has an unwelcome autumnal chill to it. The goldenrod and asters have started to bloom already. As beautiful as they are, I’m not ready to see them. They are the harbingers of the end of the growing season and the approach of darker, colder days. I’ll try not to think about that too much for now. I still have plenty of summer things to do. I will enjoy each day to its fullest and bask in the glory of the season while it lasts.
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| Goldenrod in the meadow. |
