Half Way Through Summer

August already? How can that be? August is like May in reverse. The days are noticeably shorter now. This Thursday, August 6th will mark the midpoint of summer – by the calendar, that is. Weather-wise, summer always starts late and ends early here, so our midpoint was actually back in July sometime. This is usually the hottest month of the year here – although one year, I think it was in 2005, we had a frost in August. I’ll be happy if that never happens again. I need some good sustained heat to get the tomatoes and peppers to ripen and give one last big burst of growth to the corn and squash. Things are starting to look a bit brown now as the tall grasses mature. In the meadow and along the roadsides, the goldenrod has begun to bloom. In the flower garden, some plants are starting to look a little old and tattered, as am I. But there are still some glorious flower days ahead as the dahlias and phlox come into their own. We’ve yet to see a morning glory or a hollyhock in flower. I hope that August brings them all. Right on cue, the cicadas have begun to sing. I love the sound of cicadas droning on a hot August afternoon – the perfect soundtrack to perfect summer days. And yet, these are the days when late summer sadness starts to creep in. Summer is passing too quickly. I already miss it and it hasn’t even left yet.

Sunrise one day last week, looking east.

The same sunrise looking west, with a rainbow.

Sometimes on warm summer nights when I’ve stayed up a little later than I usually do and I’m tired; when the house is quiet and I’m reading and the windows are open and the cool night air drifts in, my thoughts wander and my mind is prey to powerful memories. Sometimes they are memories of this house back long ago when I was a child visiting my aunts here. They can be so intense that I look up and half expect to see their furniture and hear them talking in another room. Sometimes they are memories of hot summer nights playing in the yard and the dark ally behind our house on Bridge Street with the smell of the distant river hanging in the humid air. Or, I remember sultry nights in Japan sitting in a little apartment with fans blowing, sweating as I read letters from home and writing long entries in my journal. Then there are flashes back to the baking hot nights in California when it felt good to have the temperature finally drop below 100° and the breeze blowing down from the hills smelled of dry sage.

Memory is a strange thing. The last time I visited my grandparents, Grandad told me that, as he got older, he began remembering things from his childhood that he had never remembered before. In the evenings during that visit, we sat at the kitchen table in their apartment, the three of us, and he told us stories of things that had only recently come back to him. Remembering him remembering makes me miss him and Grandma.

I was working with Josiah last week trimming trees. As we worked, we were discussing books we’d read or hadn’t read. Josiah mentioned that he has never read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There. I love both of those books and I tried to impress him by reciting a poem that I memorized when I was a teenager, The Walrus and the Carpenter from Through the Looking Glass. It’s a long poem – 108 lines – and I hadn’t tried to recite it in a long time. I got the beginning and the end right, but my memory faltered toward the middle. That bothered me. Our discussion then shifted from books to memory. It was a hot day and the part of the yard where we were working, under the maples at the edge of the meadow, gives off a distinct smell on hot days – the fragrance of dried grass and an herbal aroma that always brings up memories of camping. We talked about memories we have that are triggered by smells – vivid flashbacks to an exact time or place that come when we smell certain things.

The Walrus and the Carpenter.

Memory is a complicated thing, as is just about everything associated with our brains. There are different kinds of memory – long-term, short-term, implicit, explicit, semantic, episodic, procedural, sensory. They have different durations and functions and involve different areas of the brain. Much of the workings of memory are not clearly understood. Smells trigger especially vivid memories because they go from the olfactory bulb in the nose directly to the amygdala and parahippocampus gyrus, two areas of the brain connected with memory and emotion. Other senses – sight, sound, and touch, don’t do this. Our sense of taste is mostly dependent on smell. The taste buds in our mouths only detect five basic tastes – salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. The rest of what we “taste” is actually smell, so food can bring up strong memories too. That’s why something like the smell of a Christmas tree, or the taste of a vanilla ice cream cone, or a trace of perfume, or the scent of burning leaves can evoke such powerful memories. Whenever I catch a whiff of cigar or pipe smoke, it immediately brings up memories of my Grandad. And the smell of Yardley lavender soap or roses always conjures up memories of Grandma. And eating pickled eggs and beets with their sweet/sharp taste and aroma of vinegar and cinnamon and cloves takes me back to childhood picnics. Happy memories.

It’s nice having Josiah home in general, but I especially appreciate the work he does for me – climbing ladders and trees, helping with the chores, doing the more labor intensive parts of items on my Project List. On Monday we worked on trees. We removed branches from trees in the orchard that were afflicted with tent caterpillar nests and fire blight. We cut dead limbs in the old maples out front. I don’t like ladders and I know better than to try and climb a tree. Josiah is a fearless monkey when it comes to those things, so he did all the high work. On Thursday, with the help of Stacey and Hannah, we pulled down a dead tree on the bank behind the barn so it wouldn’t fall and damage the barn.

Josiah up in the trees.

Trimming the trees.

During the day all week I spent hours weeding and cleaning out spent plants in the long border. My tool of choice when I’m weeding and cultivating in the flowerbeds is a long screwdriver. It’s perfect for popping weeds out without damaging the plants around them. The flowerbeds have big empty patches now as I’ve removed old poppy and cornflower plants. The beds look tidy – for now. Weeds will try to take over pretty quickly. But some of the seeds dropped by flowers are sprouting. There are columbine, forget-me-not, and cosmos sprouting. If they grow quickly enough, maybe the weeds won’t win.

My favorite weeding tool.

Empty spaces in the flowerbed.

I finally mowed the orchard last week. The grass was nearly shoulder high. It’s time to start picking the early apples and it’s easier to do that with the grass mowed. I only mow it twice a year, now and again in the fall.

The orchard after mowing.

The mowed orchard.

Early apples are ripe.

Some of my favorite summer flowers are blooming now. The coneflowers (Echinacea), tall phlox (Phlox paniculata), and balloon flowers (Platycodon grandiflorus) are in their glory now. The colors of phlox I have range from pure white to several shades of pink to vibrant red. The bee balm (Monarda) is also at its best and is constantly full of bees, as it should be. I have a big patch of red and this year two new colors – purple and pale pink. The daylilies (Hemerocallis) are also looking fine. Along the foundation at the back of the house I have four o’clocks (Mirabilis jalapa) that open in the evening and close in the morning. I make a point of visiting then when they are open to enjoy their sweet fragrance.

Coneflowers.

Different colors of phlox.

Balloon flowers.

Bee balm.

Daylilies.

Different colors of daylilies.

My four o'clocks.

While working in the vegetable garden, I noticed that deer have been eating my green beans. I rigged some pie tins on strings dangling from the kiwi arbor to try and keep them away. The pans clank against the arbor when the slightest breeze blows. So far it has worked. The early apples are ripening and there are lots of fallen apples in the orchard that the deer are welcome to eat, but they need to stay out of my beans.

My deer deterrent.

Fallen apples.

Saturday Josiah and I worked on repairing the fence around the chicken yard. We replaced a section of fence at the front that was starting to rot. The new fence is six feet tall. We also made a new gate at the back of the chicken yard. We finished by burning the old rotten fence pieces.

New fence in the chicken yard.

Burning old fence.

We’re eating more things from the garden – cabbage, broccoli, zucchini, chard, carrots, onions, garlic, and basil. I love to go “shopping” in the garden and bring in what we need for dinner. There’s nothing quite like really fresh food.

Up the garden path.

We’re home from church now. I’m still not used to meeting with these new protocols. There were only ten of us there this morning. Maybe more members attend the later meeting. It is Fast Sunday and we are almost ready to end our fast. Stacey made a lasagna yesterday that is warming in the oven and it smells wonderful. After lunch I hope to take a little nap. The week ahead looks good. We’re supposed to get some much needed rain, but there will be plenty of sunshine and warmth and I plan to keep Josiah busy helping me with projects as we roll on through these summer days.