We’ve reached that time of the growing season when all the work and worry and fussing is finally beginning to yield substantial results. It’s the beginning of the summer harvest time. We’ve already made our way through the asparagus, spinach, and lettuce. They are really spring crops and never make it into July. They were delicious, but short-lived. Last week we ate our first broccoli, cauliflower, and peas, some of my favorite vegetables. They give us a big initial crop and then will continue to give us smaller pickings through most of the summer and into the fall – except for the peas. They’ll fizzle out in a few weeks when the heat kills them. I will enjoy them while they last. On Friday I picked a bowlful of pea pods and sat on the back porch stairs and shelled them. That’s a very nostalgic thing for me. I used to sit there with Aunt Esther and Aunt Eleanor and shell peas and listen to them talk while we worked. They will always be entwined in my love for peas.
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| Cauliflower and broccoli for dinner! |
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| Shelling peas on the back porch steps. |
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| Aunt Eleanor and Aunt Esther at the back porch door (1985). |
There’s also chard ready to eat and, in another week, beets. The cabbages are starting to form heads. I found a carrot or two big enough to pull, with many more to come. I dug up the garlic which is now hanging in the woodshed curing. From here on out, the garden will give us more and more. There will be onions and cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers, zucchini and green beans. Then as the season closes we will have dry beans and flint corn, squash, pumpkins, and late cabbages.
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| Cabbages. |
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| Garlic. |
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| Tomatoes. |
There will be fruit soon, too. The strawberries are blooming and there will be ripe berries in a week or two. On a whim I planted melons this year. I usually don’t grow them as they never mature on time here. But they are flourishing and have set fruit that I hope will ripen before frost comes (just mentioning that makes me shudder). There are raspberries on their way to ripeness. I have two raspberry patches, one in the lower garden that I control and one in the orchard that has gone completely out of control and spreads where it will. I love raspberries, so I do nothing to hinder them. Their name in English is thought to come from “rasp,” a coarse file, and berry, probably referring to the roughness of their bramble canes. I like the German word better – Himbeeren, which I believe is a contraction of Himmel, heaven, and Beeren, berries. Heavenly berries indeed. As I was contemplating raspberries, I wondered why we call making that rude noise with our mouths a raspberry, so I looked it up. Apparently it comes from Cockney Rhyming Slang where “raspberry tart” means “fart.” And from that we also get the word razz, as in to harass. Odd associations.
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| A little melon. |
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| Strawberries in bloom. |
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| Unripe raspberries. |
The earliest apples – the Sops of Wine, the Duchess of Oldenburgs, and the Yellow Transparents (I love the names of Old Apples) will ripen in a few weeks. They don’t store well and will be eaten right away or made into apple sauce and pie filling. While inspecting the orchard last week, I found several branches on various trees with tent caterpillar (Malacosoma americanum) nests on them. I really hate tent caterpillars. I pruned out those nests immediately and stomped the nasty worms into oblivion. Luckily, there were only a few nests and they were low in the trees and easy to reach. There’s always something bad going on when it comes to orchards. When I first decided to plant my orchard, I spoke to an agent at the County Cooperative Extension to see what kinds of apples were best to grow here. The agent chuckled and said something like, “So, you’re planting an apple orchard. Expect to encounter every insect pest, fungus, and disease known to man.” I laughed, thinking he was joking. He wasn’t. Over the years I’ve learned more than I ever wanted or expected to about things like apple scab, black rot, rust, flyspeck, mildew, sooty blotch, fire blight, apple maggot, codling moth, vole damage, deer damage, and roundhead apple tree borers. And as a devoted holistic orchardist, I’ve learned how to try to control them with things like soap, garlic, neem and karanja oils, tree tanglefoot, pheromone traps, microbial inoculants, kaolin spray, and other arcane concoctions. But in a good year (not 2020), it’s worth all the trouble and effort when I pick bushels and bushels of apples to feast on and to turn into sauce, cider, and vinegar. In a bad year, I content myself to wander among the fruitless trees and remember what a good year is like and hope for better times to come.
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| Early apples: Sops of Wine, Duchess, Yellow Transparent. |
I wonder sometimes if some people have a genetic predisposition to garden. If such a thing exists, I have it. I come from a long line of ancestral farmers, but those lines ended with my paternal grandparents and maternal great grandparents who grew up on farms, but did not become farmers, nor did any of their children. My closest generational link to the soil was my grandfather Lawrence Evered Howe – we always call him Papa. He grew up on a farm in Keech, just up the road from here. He left the farm and became a chiropractor, but he always loved to garden. My father grew up in his father’s gardens, but he did not garden. Papa died when I was two. I knew him, but I do not remember him. Until I was ten, I lived in the house on Bridge Street that belonged to him and I played in the ruins of his last garden. Somehow the need to garden skipped a generation and came from him to me.
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| Lawrence Evered Howe. |
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| Papa and his famous sunflowers. |
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| Papa in his garden on Bridge Street. |
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| Papa's roses as I knew them. |
Perhaps it was my close association with Papa’s garden where roses bloomed every summer and spring bulbs magically came up every spring without any help or care from us. There were Rose of Sharon bushes and forsythias that flowered without fail. There was a huge grape vine that clambered up the fire escape at the back of the house. And there were fruit trees – a big pear tree at the top of the yard and a gigantic cherry tree in the lower yard – that we feasted on. I have idyllic memories of all of them. When we moved away from that house, it took a few years for the gardening gene to kick in. The first garden I attempted was at our house in the country near Ravenna, Ohio, when I was thirteen. We had an acre of yard there and beautiful beds of portulaca and balsam and daisies in full bloom when we moved there in August of 1971. I tended them through the rest of that summer and the next spring, I planted a flower garden of my own. I also attempted my first vegetable garden there. I tilled the hillside on the other side of the creek and planted tomatoes and corn. Not knowing anything about what I was doing, it was all a disaster and amounted to nothing. We only lived in that house for a year. In August of 1972 we moved to a house in Naperville, Illinois. This house was in an older neighborhood and had a small yard with a long flowerbed down one side of the house. We lived there for six years and every year I planted flowers. I also planted a vegetable garden in the back yard and over time I learned and had more success. And I read books, lots of books, about gardening. Each successful year intensified my love of and need to garden.
I left Naperville in 1978 to serve a two year mission in Japan where I saw some fabulous gardens. While I was there, my family moved from Illinois to Southern California. When I returned from my mission, it was to a new home in Sylmar, California, and a climate I’d never known. For the next twenty years I planted gardens in Southern California and my experience and knowledge increased. I made some mistakes and I learned from them, but each year my knowledge and skill steadily increased. I planted some beautiful gardens there, first in my parents’ yard and then in various homes that Stacey and I lived in with our growing family. Finally, after twenty years of hoping and dreaming, by a series of miracles, we moved to this house. I have always loved this place. I knew it as a child when my sweet aunts Sarah, Esther, and Eleanor lived here. Before my aunts, for a few years, Papa and Nana lived here. Papa once had a garden here.
I left Naperville in 1978 to serve a two year mission in Japan where I saw some fabulous gardens. While I was there, my family moved from Illinois to Southern California. When I returned from my mission, it was to a new home in Sylmar, California, and a climate I’d never known. For the next twenty years I planted gardens in Southern California and my experience and knowledge increased. I made some mistakes and I learned from them, but each year my knowledge and skill steadily increased. I planted some beautiful gardens there, first in my parents’ yard and then in various homes that Stacey and I lived in with our growing family. Finally, after twenty years of hoping and dreaming, by a series of miracles, we moved to this house. I have always loved this place. I knew it as a child when my sweet aunts Sarah, Esther, and Eleanor lived here. Before my aunts, for a few years, Papa and Nana lived here. Papa once had a garden here.
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| Papa, Eleanor, Esther, and Sarah sometime in the 1950's when Papa was visiting his sisters. Me standing in the same spot yesterday. |
I began planting gardens here right away – flowerbeds, vegetable gardens, and an orchard. The climate here was different from any place I’d lived before and it took some time to learn and to adjust my gardening skills. But now, after twenty years of caring for this piece of earth, I think I’m beginning to get the hang of it. Of course, I still make mistakes. Some years my plans result in disaster from faulty thinking or bad weather or other natural causes. But some years are successful. The good years keep my desire to garden fueled. I think gardening is something more than a hobby or even a desire for me. I think it is a genetic need, something encoded in my DNA that came to me from Papa and all those farmer ancestors stretching all the way back to Adam, who, when he was created, was placed in a garden planted by God himself and was told by God to dress it and keep it. My Grandma Rathfon, the poetess, once sent this poem to me. It was one she loved.
The Lord God Planted a Garden
By Dorothy Frances Gurney (1858-1932)
The Lord God planted a garden
In the first white days of the world,
And He set there an angel warden
In a garment of light enfurled.
So near to the peace of Heaven,
That the hawk might nest with the wren,
For there in the cool of the even
God walked with the first of men.
And I dream that these garden closes
With their shade and their sun-flecked sod
And their lilies and bowers of roses,
Were laid by the hand of God.
The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth, –
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.
I often feel near to Papa and to God when I’m in a beautiful garden – be it my own or some other. I revel in organizing gardens out of the miraculous creations designed by God. But I know that, while I might plant the seeds and tend the plants, I do not give them life. I read once in an ancient apocryphal book called The Life of Adam and Eve (it’s technically a pseudepigraphal book, a book once considered sacred but eventually rejected as scripture) that after being expelled from Eden, Adam spent the rest of his life longing for the garden. The book says he made his home where he could look afar and see the gates of Eden and that he tilled the earth in an effort to recreate that place that he loved. I think as children of Adam and Eve, we all have, to some degree, an inborn appreciation for gardens and, perhaps, a hereditary longing for Eden. I know I do.
Our summer has been warm and dry so far. Last week after much sky watching and praying, we finally had some rain on Thursday night. It was just a quarter of an inch, but it was a blessing. Out in the garden the poppies are almost gone now, done in by the heat. They were especially pretty this year. Their seed pods are still in the garden and I cannot pull them up until they are ripe so I can have seed for next year. Now the flowers that will stay the rest of the summer are starting to bloom – tall phlox, gladiolus, coneflowers, marigolds, black-eyed Susans, dahlias, and daylilies. I love blue flowers and now, for a short while, that will be the dominant color as the larkspur, cornflowers, nigella, and firmament bloom. Along the roadsides the beautiful blue chicory is flowering. Blue flowers do not last long. Their color is rare and cool and does not abide the heat and glare of the high summer sun.
The Lord God Planted a Garden
By Dorothy Frances Gurney (1858-1932)
The Lord God planted a garden
In the first white days of the world,
And He set there an angel warden
In a garment of light enfurled.
So near to the peace of Heaven,
That the hawk might nest with the wren,
For there in the cool of the even
God walked with the first of men.
And I dream that these garden closes
With their shade and their sun-flecked sod
And their lilies and bowers of roses,
Were laid by the hand of God.
The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth, –
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.
I often feel near to Papa and to God when I’m in a beautiful garden – be it my own or some other. I revel in organizing gardens out of the miraculous creations designed by God. But I know that, while I might plant the seeds and tend the plants, I do not give them life. I read once in an ancient apocryphal book called The Life of Adam and Eve (it’s technically a pseudepigraphal book, a book once considered sacred but eventually rejected as scripture) that after being expelled from Eden, Adam spent the rest of his life longing for the garden. The book says he made his home where he could look afar and see the gates of Eden and that he tilled the earth in an effort to recreate that place that he loved. I think as children of Adam and Eve, we all have, to some degree, an inborn appreciation for gardens and, perhaps, a hereditary longing for Eden. I know I do.
Our summer has been warm and dry so far. Last week after much sky watching and praying, we finally had some rain on Thursday night. It was just a quarter of an inch, but it was a blessing. Out in the garden the poppies are almost gone now, done in by the heat. They were especially pretty this year. Their seed pods are still in the garden and I cannot pull them up until they are ripe so I can have seed for next year. Now the flowers that will stay the rest of the summer are starting to bloom – tall phlox, gladiolus, coneflowers, marigolds, black-eyed Susans, dahlias, and daylilies. I love blue flowers and now, for a short while, that will be the dominant color as the larkspur, cornflowers, nigella, and firmament bloom. Along the roadsides the beautiful blue chicory is flowering. Blue flowers do not last long. Their color is rare and cool and does not abide the heat and glare of the high summer sun.
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| The long border with poppy seed pods. |
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| Tall phlox. |
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| Marigolds. |
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| Chicory. |
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| Chicory along the road. |
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| Blue nigella. |
Now that high summer is here, my garden time is mostly spent doing damage control. The weeds are growing rampantly, trying to bloom and set seed before I notice them and kill them. Every morning now, except on the Sabbath, I go out with my bowl of warm soapy water and prowl the garden hunting Japanese beetles. As usual, the day after I’d commented on how scarce they were this year, they showed up in their hundreds.
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| Japanese beetles in the roses. |
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| One morning's worth of beetles. |
And so the summer rushes on. The corn is hip high. The beans are blooming. The pigs are getting big and fat. This year’s chicks are not chicks anymore. The young roosters – there are too many and they soon will have to go – are crowing non-stop. The young hens will start laying soon. The world is full of vigor and life and flush with abundance. Summer is good.
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