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| Along the road to church this morning. |
Here, where the reaper was at work of late—
In this high field's dark corner, where he leaves
His coat, his basket, and his earthen cruse,
And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves,
Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use—
Here will I sit and wait,
While to my ear from uplands far away
The bleating of the folded flocks is borne,
With distant cries of reapers in the corn—
All the live murmur of a summer's day.
That is a stanza from one of my favorite poems, The Scholar Gypsy by Matthew Arnold. The reapers have indeed been at work in the fields above us, but with tractors and balers and the local flocks here don’t bleat, they moo – it’s not nearly as poetic as it was in Arnold’s day. We have our own type of summer’s murmuring.
Summer is a noisy time of year. In winter the days and nights are pretty quiet – the loudest noise is usually the howling of the cold and dismal wind. But summer is full of sound – day and night – happy, heart-warming music. Birds sing from the first gray light of approaching dawn to the last deep purple light of twilight. Every morning when I go down to the barn there is a catbird that sings from a brushy patch across the road by the beaver pond. Its song is rambling, random, and, amazingly, sometimes sounds like it is singing the words “pretty bird.” Summer days are filled with the singing of birds. And at night the frogs make music. The spring peepers are silent now, but the bullfrogs are in full and boisterous voice. On Saturday I heard one of my favorite summer sounds for the first time – one cicada singing from high in one of the maple trees. It was a warm afternoon and I was sitting in the shade and the sound of the cicada was the perfect accompaniment.
Last week we had a double barnyard tragedy. On Monday evening when I went down to close the barn, I did my usual perusal of the coop to make sure all was well before I closed the door for the night. I noticed right away that Pedro, our beautiful little rooster was missing. He always roosts in the same place on one of the rafters beside his favorite hen, Doris. Doris was in her usual spot, but not Pedro. I searched the whole coop thinking he might have gone to roost somewhere else, but he was nowhere to be found. It was dark by then, but I took my light and searched the yard as best I could. I didn’t find any sign of him. Tuesday morning I went down and opened the barn, threw the chickens their morning scratch, and set off on another search for Pedro. I found him. He was under the ramp to the upper part of the barn, dead. I examined him and found no signs of violence. He was just dead. He was the prettiest chicken we ever had with bright red, gold, and green feathers and a beautiful long green tail. I have other roosters, but none of them can compare with lovely Pedro. Poor Pedro. I gave him a fitting grave in the woodland garden with a large stone to mark the spot. Now Doris doesn’t sleep in the rafters anymore. With Pedro gone, she has gone back to roosting with the rest of chickens. Then today I found our Polish Crested Rooster, Copernicus, dead. For some reason for the past few nights he stayed out of coop for the night. I don’t know why and I don’t know where he decided to roost, but wherever it was, something found him and killed him. He is buried in the woodland garden beside Pedro. He was a comical fellow. Our little flock is dwindling.
In this high field's dark corner, where he leaves
His coat, his basket, and his earthen cruse,
And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves,
Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use—
Here will I sit and wait,
While to my ear from uplands far away
The bleating of the folded flocks is borne,
With distant cries of reapers in the corn—
All the live murmur of a summer's day.
That is a stanza from one of my favorite poems, The Scholar Gypsy by Matthew Arnold. The reapers have indeed been at work in the fields above us, but with tractors and balers and the local flocks here don’t bleat, they moo – it’s not nearly as poetic as it was in Arnold’s day. We have our own type of summer’s murmuring.
Summer is a noisy time of year. In winter the days and nights are pretty quiet – the loudest noise is usually the howling of the cold and dismal wind. But summer is full of sound – day and night – happy, heart-warming music. Birds sing from the first gray light of approaching dawn to the last deep purple light of twilight. Every morning when I go down to the barn there is a catbird that sings from a brushy patch across the road by the beaver pond. Its song is rambling, random, and, amazingly, sometimes sounds like it is singing the words “pretty bird.” Summer days are filled with the singing of birds. And at night the frogs make music. The spring peepers are silent now, but the bullfrogs are in full and boisterous voice. On Saturday I heard one of my favorite summer sounds for the first time – one cicada singing from high in one of the maple trees. It was a warm afternoon and I was sitting in the shade and the sound of the cicada was the perfect accompaniment.
Last week we had a double barnyard tragedy. On Monday evening when I went down to close the barn, I did my usual perusal of the coop to make sure all was well before I closed the door for the night. I noticed right away that Pedro, our beautiful little rooster was missing. He always roosts in the same place on one of the rafters beside his favorite hen, Doris. Doris was in her usual spot, but not Pedro. I searched the whole coop thinking he might have gone to roost somewhere else, but he was nowhere to be found. It was dark by then, but I took my light and searched the yard as best I could. I didn’t find any sign of him. Tuesday morning I went down and opened the barn, threw the chickens their morning scratch, and set off on another search for Pedro. I found him. He was under the ramp to the upper part of the barn, dead. I examined him and found no signs of violence. He was just dead. He was the prettiest chicken we ever had with bright red, gold, and green feathers and a beautiful long green tail. I have other roosters, but none of them can compare with lovely Pedro. Poor Pedro. I gave him a fitting grave in the woodland garden with a large stone to mark the spot. Now Doris doesn’t sleep in the rafters anymore. With Pedro gone, she has gone back to roosting with the rest of chickens. Then today I found our Polish Crested Rooster, Copernicus, dead. For some reason for the past few nights he stayed out of coop for the night. I don’t know why and I don’t know where he decided to roost, but wherever it was, something found him and killed him. He is buried in the woodland garden beside Pedro. He was a comical fellow. Our little flock is dwindling.
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| R.I.P. Pedro. |
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| Josiah with Copernicus back in 2014. |
One of the things I learned early on in my lifelong gardening adventure is that Nature Abhors A Vacuum (a phrase whose origin is attributed to Aristotle in regards to physics, but it also applies to gardens). Nature does not like bare exposed soil and when she encounters some, she covers it with weeds. One of my main tasks as a tiller of the earth is to make sure there are no bare spots. After 45 years of gardening, I’m still not always successful at it. The trick is succession planting, making sure one plant is ready to take over when another finishes its life and dies out. For example, when the tulips, daffodils, and crocuses are done, something better be ready to fill the gap. I use poppies, larkspur, and cornflowers to do that. But they don’t last through to the fall and when they die off in the mid and late summer, I never seem to have anything ready to take over where they left off. Last week I pulled up most of my early poppies. They were done and were looking ragged. I don’t have anything growing to fill in the spots where they were, and so there are patches of bare ground now and soon there will be weeds. In the vegetable garden, the lettuce has gone to seed and needs to be pulled up. That will leave a big empty spot and there is nothing to fill it. It’s too warm to start more lettuce and anything else won’t have time to mature. Even after all these years, I’m still learning. Maybe next year I’ll do better.
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| Larkspur and foxgloves. |
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| Various poppies. |
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| Cosmos, cornflowers, daylilies, and Queen Anne's lace. |
One of the weeds I’ve long done battle with in my garden is purslane (Portulaca oleracea). It has succulent leaves and stems and tiny yellow flowers. It comes up everywhere in my garden, grows quickly, and forms dense mats. When I pull it up, if I leave even a small broken bit of it behind, it re-roots itself and keeps on growing. I’ve always considered it to be an obnoxious pest. It’s closely related to Moss Rose (Portulaca grandiflora), that I grow and love as an ornamental, but purslane was never welcome in my garden. And then – I read some articles, on one of the gardening sites that I frequent, that claimed that purslane is not the horrible weed I thought it was. It is actually cultivated by some people as a vegetable. There are seed catalogs that actually sell purslane seed as a vegetable! According to these articles, people in various parts of the world (France is usually mentioned, but they also eat snails, so that didn’t impress me) relish the fresh young plants, especially the young leaves and tender stem tips. The taste, they say, is similar to watercress or spinach. People put purslane in salads and eat it cooked, steamed, stir-fried, and pureed. It is actually very nutritious. It has extremely high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, fiber, vitamin A, vitamin C, some of the B vitamins, iron, magnesium, manganese, potassium, calcium, copper, and several powerful antioxidant compounds. Having hated the plant for so long, I was intrigued by what I read. Then I read that some people use it as ground cover in parts of their gardens, using its quick growth rate and mat-forming tendency to smother out other weeds. Its drought resistance and succulence help stabilize water retention in the soil. Well, I was impressed. So I’ve stopped pulling it up and am now tolerating its presence in between the rows of my vegetable garden. I still won’t let stay in my flower beds. And I haven’t quite worked up the courage to eat some. I’ll let you know when I do.
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| Purslane in my garden. |
Years ago when we first got bees, I did some research to find out what kind of plants make the best honey. Some of the finest honey, I found out, is made from the flowers of linden trees. I planted one that year. It was just a little thing at first, but over the years it has grown into a beautiful tree. About four years ago it was finally mature enough to bloom and I waited for it in high anticipation. I never got to see it. Year after year, just as the flowers were forming, Japanese beetles would descend on it and eat the flowers still in their buds. But this year Japanese beetles are rare and my linden tree is in full bloom right now and it is glorious. The perfume of the linden flowers is hauntingly wonderful. I think at some point in my childhood I must have encountered linden trees in bloom because the aroma is powerfully nostalgic to me. Linden flowers are what I imagine heaven smells like. I could stand downwind all day and do nothing but breathe it in and I’d be happy. Unfortunately, I don’t keep bees anymore so the bees thronging the tree are making delicious honey for someone else. The bees seem to be delighted by my linden tree. I am too.
And air-swept lindens yield
Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers
Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid,
And bower me from the August sun with shade;
And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers.
More lines from The Scholar Gypsy that describe these perfect summer days, although it isn’t August (thankfully) and I am thousands of miles away from Oxford’s towers.
And air-swept lindens yield
Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers
Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid,
And bower me from the August sun with shade;
And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers.
More lines from The Scholar Gypsy that describe these perfect summer days, although it isn’t August (thankfully) and I am thousands of miles away from Oxford’s towers.
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| My linden tree in bloom. |
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| Linden flowers. |
Speaking of bees, on Friday Miriam and I took a walk up to the hollow and back and as we walked we noticed bees flying in and out of a crevice in a hemlock tree right by the road. This is the first time I’ve ever found a wild honey tree. The tree is huge and the crevice is small, so there is no way to get at the honey. With my bad reaction to bee stings, I’m not tempted to try no matter what.
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| On our walk toward the hollow. |
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| In the hollow. |
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| The bee tree. |
On Friday the Georgia Shilligs, my nephew Aaron and his family, arrived for a visit. They are staying over at Kurt and Julie’s house except for their son Dallin and their dog Solo, who are staying here. Summer company is a tradition here. When I was young and my aunts lived here, my family was often the summer company. Summer company means big meals, swimming at Erway’s pond, sitting around the fire pit in the evenings, playing all sorts of games, and lots of time sitting around and talking. The Georgia Shilligs are the first of the summer company and there are more visitors coming. My nieces Alexa, Rebecca, and Missy and her baby, Rachel and her girls, and my niece Kohl and her children will all arrive here during the next week. There is the possibility of others later in August. There is a rumor that Daniel might come to visit. Hannah will be home from school at the end of the month. And at the beginning of September, Josiah will come home from his mission. Summer is a busy, happy time here.
Today is Dallin’s birthday so after church we ate a birthday lunch over at the Shillig’s house. Mandi (his mother) made a delicious lasagna and we had a green salad, sauteed mushrooms, and summer squash (we have an abundance of summer squash right now). Later this evening we’ll go back over for birthday pie, ice cream, and presents. Dallin turned 16 today.
Today is Dallin’s birthday so after church we ate a birthday lunch over at the Shillig’s house. Mandi (his mother) made a delicious lasagna and we had a green salad, sauteed mushrooms, and summer squash (we have an abundance of summer squash right now). Later this evening we’ll go back over for birthday pie, ice cream, and presents. Dallin turned 16 today.
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| Dalin's birthday lunch. |
Now I’m a little late for doing the afternoon chores. I’m sure the chickens are lined up at the fence waiting anxiously for me. It’s nice to be so appreciated.
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| The garden. |
