Lovely June

June is here at last! These are the best days of the year. The days are long and mild. Now the world of nature will be at the peak of its loveliness as we move from spring into summer.

Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on,
    Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,
Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,
    Sweet-William with his homely cottage-smell,
       And stocks in fragrant blow;
Roses that down the alleys shine afar,
    And open, jasmine-muffled lattices,
    And groups under the dreaming garden-trees,
And the full moon, and the white evening-star.

I’ve always loved those lines from Matthew Arnold’s poem, Thyrsis. I discovered the poetry of Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) sometime back in the early 80's after hearing a performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ work An Oxford Elegy, a lovely piece that uses lines from two of Arnold’s poems, Thyrsis and The Scholar Gypsy set to beautiful music. After hearing An Oxford Elegy, I scoured used bookstores and found and bought a book of Arnold’s poems. He has been a favorite poet ever since. In tribute to the poetry and the music, I try to fill my garden with the flowers he mentions. That is why, as I wait for the high Midsummer pomps to come on, I have musk carnations, snapdragons, sweet-Williams, stocks, and roses in my garden. I wish I had jasmine-muffled lattices, but my climate is not mild enough.

I’m ready for June to dazzle and delight me and seldom does she fail me. May had its terrors and disappointments – too much untimely snow and too many unwelcome frosts. It left us with a final attack of cold on Sunday night. The first of June arrived with a pretty but chilly sunrise. I knew there was a chance for frost that morning and I was up well before dawn to inspect the garden. As I went out the door, the thermometer read 36°, just four degrees above freezing, but it must have been colder during the night because there was a light frost in parts of the yard. I’d taken what precautions I could the night before. I brought all my potted plants onto the back porch. I covered the tiny morning glory sprouts out under their trellis and I covered one of the few lilies to have survived all the previous freezes. In the pearly predawn light I unwrapped the garden hose and sprayed down every part of the garden I could reach. I was numb with cold when I came back into the house. I couldn’t feel my fingers. I went out again after the sun was up and it had warmed a little. The damage was minimal and I felt blessed. After that last blast of cold from the north, it looks like we’re done with frost for a while. I hope not to see it again until October. Now the garden can settle into some serious growing.

Dawn on the First of June.

Feeling confident that the weather from here on out will be safe, I planted out the rest of my garden last week – several kinds of squash and pumpkins, cucumbers, basil, parsley, green beans, and tomatoes. The biggest part of that was planting my tomatoes. Some of the plants were so big, they were already blooming in their pots. Over the years, I’ve tried several methods of training tomato vines, none of them completely successful. I’ve used cages – store-bought and homemade. I’ve used various kinds of fencing. I’ve used bamboo poles, string, and wire in different configurations. Each attempt starts out well, but I’m a reluctant pruner and pincher. Before long, the plants are huge, sprawling, heavy things that overwhelm their supports and break under the weight of their own fruit. This year I’m trying yet another method. I bought two heavy wire livestock panels and some sturdy t-posts at the Tractor Supply and set them in place in the big garden. I planted eight plants along each panel. When I train the tomatoes against them, they should be able to bear the weight – if I do a better job of pruning the plants (I have a new determination to do better). We’ll see how it goes. Tomatoes are the most important crop I grow. And I don’t even like tomatoes – at least in their raw state. I love tomato sauce and soup and salsa, but I cannot eat a plain raw tomato in any form. They disgust me. However, I do have some raw tomato lovers here that I try to please, so I grow the most delicious slicing varieties for their enjoyment. And I grow the best sauce tomatoes for me to can.

The big garden.

My dislike for tomatoes stretches far back into my earliest childhood. I shed many tears as a child when I had to eat tomatoes. It was the policy that we ate whatever was for dinner and we did not throw food away. I choked down hoagies that would otherwise have been delightful to me but for the sliced tomatoes in them. I wept over eating stewed tomatoes, which I still consider to be the most vile way a tomato can be consumed. A few times I tried to sneak the diced tomatoes out of a salad and hide them on my plate only to be found out and made to eat the slimy pile. As an adult I’ve tried at different times to overcome my hatred of tomatoes. I’ve taken perfectly ripe fruit from vines I’ve lovingly tended, taken a bite and chewed and swallowed and then promptly choked it back up. I just can’t do it. I can eat other things I’ve always hated if I try – lima beans, succotash, turnips – but not tomatoes. Never.

For the last week or so, while working in the long border, I’ve seen a little bird run out from under the pink rugosa rose bush and fly away. It looked like a chipping sparrow (Spizella passerina). It seemed odd to me that it was always there. On Monday we discovered what it is and what it’s doing there. It’s a field sparrow (Spizella pusilla), which does resemble a chipping sparrow, and it has built a nest on the ground under the rose bush and there are five babies in it. I’m glad that I’ve been negligent in weeding under that rose bush or I might have damaged that tiny nest.

Field sparrow (not my photo).

The nest under the roses.

Five days later, the babies have grown.

In other bird news, the robins have successfully raised their brood of babies in our yard and the Shillig’s. All three nests are empty now and the babies are scattered around our yards. Now that the baby robins are out of the nest, we’ve entered the more annoying part of robin rearing. The babies chirp constantly from wherever they are hiding, a sort of sonic location system for their parents. While I’m working in the yard, the squawking chirps coming from the bushes and tall grass all around me get irritating. And the parents raise a racket if I get too close to wherever a baby is hiding. I’m always glad when the babies are old enough to go away.

A crowded robin's nest at Shillig's.

The nest under the eaves before evacuation.

On Tuesday night we had a great storm. I was asleep when it arrived and the sound of it woke me up. Over several hours there was wind, thunder, and lightning. Almost an inch of rain fell. On Wednesday morning I took my usual walk in a world still wet from the rain. Everything was fresh and clean. It smelled wonderful.

I’m an early riser. I’m awake by 5:30, no matter what. In the fall, winter, and early spring it’s still dark at that hour, but in June and July the sun is already rising by then, so in order to catch the sunrise, I wake up even earlier. Some members of my family think I’m a little crazy to get up that early, but I hate to miss a good sunrise. I want to be outdoors in time to hear the dawn chorus of the birds and the last of the frogs as they cease their nocturnal singing. These long days have the finest dawns and dusks of the year. I like to be up and outdoors before the sun comes up and to stay out until the last evening light fades. These are the days I long for during the endless dark days of the year. I use them to recharge my mental battery. They renew me.

Dawn on the Third of June.

Foggy sunrise on the Fourth of June.

June is a bright and floriferous month. So many beautiful flowers belong to June. Right on cue, the first poppies have opened and the irises have begun to bloom. Every year as the first irises open, I’m always amazed that I’d forgotten how beautiful they are. I have five patches of them interspersed through the long border, but I always find myself saying, “Why don’t I have more irises?” And now the lupines are in flower too. I used to have dozens of them. They once dominated the lower boarder, but over the years they have spread out and thinned out. When they start to bloom, I remember that I’d intended to plant more lupine seeds in early spring but didn’t. I will next year for certain.

The first poppy to open.

The second poppy.

Irises in my garden.

The first of the lupines.

Dandelion days are just about finished now. There are a few yellow flowers yet, but most of them have gone to seed. The fields above us are white with them and when the wind blows, the seeds float away in their millions. I do not exaggerate when I say millions – I did the math. Every dandelion flower produces about 100 seeds. In the field just above our house, there are about 10 seed heads per square foot (I counted). That field, at least the lower part where the dandelions are thickest, covers about 5 acres. At 43,560 square feet per acre times 5 acres, that’s 217,800 square feet. And with 10 seed heads per square foot and 100 seeds per seed head, that’s 217,800,000 seeds in that field. And that’s not the only field full of dandelions around here. That’s why it is futile for me to obsess too much over controlling dandelions in my garden. The odds favor the flowers.

The field full of dandelion seeds.

One hundred seeds per seed head.

With the dandelions going or gone, the buttercups (Ranunculus repens) are the yellow in our landscape. Buttercup yellow is even brighter than dandelion yellow. I love their shiny yellow flowers. But I never let buttercups grow near my garden. They spread too quickly by root and seed and quickly overwhelm everything. I let them grow in the orchard and I love to see them flourish in places outside my yard.

Buttercups in the upper fields.

The June garden is as much about fragrance as it about color. The lilacs are still blooming and on a warm and still afternoon their perfume hangs in the air. In the woodland garden the pink azalea bush is flowering. I love its musky odor. And one of the weeds I love the most, wild phlox or dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis) as it is also called, with its white and pink and purple flowers is blooming along the roadsides and in places in my yard. I encourage it to grow in the wild edges of the property. In the evenings the aroma of its flowers is intoxicating.

Different lilacs in my garden.

My woodland azalea.

Fragrant azalea.

Wild phlox.

In June, with my garden growing and so much beauty around me, I always feel a sense of peace and hope. The world around me is vigorous and fresh. The prospect of a good harvest waiting in the weeks ahead fills me with anticipation and hope. On a beautiful and peaceful Sabbath such as this, I can scarcely imagine the turmoil I see is raging in other places. Every day I’m busy being caught up in the work of tending to this little stewardship I’ve been entrusted with. I’m sorry that others are angry and unhappy and scared. I sometimes think that if they just had a little piece of land to tend and feel that they belong to, people would be happier and many of the world’s troubles would fade away. Perhaps I’m too simplistic. I know it works for me.

Swelling apples bring me hope.