Perfect Days - Almost

And what is so rare as a day in June?

Then, if ever, come perfect days.

James Russell Lowell’s poetic tribute to the month of June is rather long – sixty lines in praise of the month’s beauty. The only lines I ever remember are the first two quoted above. I always think of them at this time of year. The other piece of poetry that is always in my head during June are lines from Matthew Arnold’s elegy Thyrsis (much longer, at 230 lines, but only lines 51-76 pertain to June). I think I quote them in the Journal nearly every year sometime during the month. [I’ve been writing these weekly essays for 22 years so it’s inevitable that I start repeating myself. But it is good that I actually know that I’m repeating myself.] Arnold’s words are lovely. They evoke perfectly my love for this idyllic season.

So, some tempestuous morn in early June,

When the year’s primal burst of bloom is o’er,

Before the roses and the longest day—

When garden-walks, and all the grassy floor,

With blossoms, red and white, of fallen May,

And chestnut-flowers are strewn—

So have I heard the cuckoo’s parting cry,

From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees,

Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze:

The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I.

Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go?

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 its 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.

He hearkens not! light comer, he is flown!

What matters it? next year he will return,

And we shall have him in the sweet spring-days,

With whitening hedges, and uncrumpling fern,

And blue-bells trembling by the forest-ways,

And scent of hay new-mown.

Summer, the longest day, arrives on Tuesday and I have heard the cuckoos calling from the hawthorn wood across the road. The farmers are cutting the first hay in the fields around us. My garden, by design, is full of the flowers Matthew Arnold mentions – carnations, snapdragons, sweet Williams, roses, jasmine, ferns, and bluebells. I didn’t plant stocks this year and I’m sorry for it. He doesn’t mention the other flowers that fill my garden as we move into summer – peonies, poppies, lilies, foxgloves, and a host of others. I’m sure he just didn’t want to overdo it by turning his poem into a flower catalog.

Poppies, roses peonies, and cornflowers.

Part of the long border.

We’ve reached that point in the season when the dandelions and violets in the lawn have been replaced by clover. I love clover in my lawn. In fact, I can hardly bring myself to mow the grass when it is full of clover blossoms. The clover in the lawn is white clover and mowing it keeps it short. Out in the orchard where I don’t mow, it grows eight or nine inches tall. I also have red clover in parts of the orchard, which is much taller with bigger flowers. When I kept bees, clover time made me feel like I really was “in clover,” an old idiom meaning rich, because clover pasture is so delicious and fattening for the cattle that graze on it. Back in the days when I had beehives, seeing bees gathering nectar from the abundant clover meant a wealth of sweet clover honey later in the summer. I miss my bees.

White clover in the tall grass.

Red clover in the orchard.

Monday was Miriam’s birthday. The Shilligs came over for dinner and we celebrated with lasagna, salad, and focaccia. Miriam made her own birthday treat, a chocolate peanut butter torte, which was delicious and a real treat for us all. We sang Happy Birthday and she opened gifts.

Miriam's birthday.

The beginning of the week was very warm. On Wednesday, the warmest day, We hit 92° and I loved it. After the heat of the day, the cool of the evening was perfect. It was a delight to sit out and watch the light fade and hear the birds sing as they went to roost and watch the fireflies blink in the tall grass. Thursday morning when I went out, the air was warm and soft. The mock orange bushes are beginning to bloom and I could smell them from across the garden. The forecast said that rain was expected and, knowing that the top-heavy peonies wouldn’t fare well in the rain, I cut a bouquet and brought it in. Their fragrance filled the house. It never did rain, but I was happy to have the peonies anyway. Although the rain never came, it did cool off later in the week, back into the normal 70° range.

The mock oranges are beginning to bloom.

My peony bed.

Bouquet of peonies.

I was working in the peacock pen on Thursday putting up poles to raise the net covering that had sagged a bit. While I was working, the peacock stood nearby watching me, but the peahen just sat at the end of the pen in the tall grass. It occurred to me that for the last week or so she had been sitting in that same spot in the tall grass. I investigated and discovered that she’s sitting on six eggs. I don’t know why she didn’t make a proper nest inside her house, but she didn’t. And I don’t know exactly when she started to set, so I don’t know when the eggs are due to hatch. I don’t know if the eggs are even fertile. We’ll see.

The peahen on her nest in the grass.

Thursday evening, after more than a week of closing up the chicken coop every night, I decided not to. Nothing had happened in that time to indicate any further attempts at an attack. Everything seemed to have returned to normal. I figured that the possum we caught must have been the problem. It’s amazing how a serene June morning can turn into a tragedy. On Friday morning I stopped at the barn while on my walk just to see how the flock was. There were already hens out in their yard scratching around, dust bathing. Then I went into the coop. There was a mangy looking fox and seven dead chickens, including my beautiful white rooster. The fox ran out the door as I stood there in shock. It seems the possum was just a coincidence. This fox was the culprit all along. I was sad and angry as I disposed of the remains. I was even angrier when I went down to do the chores in the afternoon and found that the fox had been back sometime during the day and killed another hen. I later found two more carcasses the fox had dragged off and partially eaten. Then that evening as we were leaving to go to the movies, I heard a hen screaming and rushed down to the barn. The fox was in the coop again. I closed it in and we despatched it. It was a sick fox. I think it had mange. It had hardly any fur and was skeletally thin. Even with the fox dead, I’ll be closing the coop at night from now on. That fox killed eighteen chickens in two weeks, half of my mature flock. I have sixteen young pullets still sequestered in their pen, but they won’t start laying eggs until the fall. A friend of Hannah’s has extra roosters and they are bring us one today. My old rooster was very gentle. I hope this new one is too. I don’t like battling a mean rooster. My poor flock is quite diminished.

On a happier note, I ate the first strawberry from our garden on Thursday. There are lots of pink and green ones still to ripen. I also picked some broccoli that day. We ate it for dinner that evening in my favorite broccoli-bacon-cheese salad. On Friday I picked more and Miriam is in the process of freeze-drying it. That was the first main crop. There are still some smaller heads yet to cut and there are already side shoots forming that will keep going for the rest of the season. I love broccoli.

Broccoli in the garden.

Part of our first picking.

I like to keep track of avian activity in our yard, which birds come to the feeders, where the nests are around the property. The robins nesting under the back porch eaves are raising their second brood now. The bluebirds are still hanging around the bird house out on the trellis, but haven’t moved in as far as I can tell. We have three chipping sparrow nests – one near the ground in a patch of wild flowers, one in the honeyberry bush, and one in the big Thompkins King apple tree. That tree also has a nest of cedar waxwings in it. And the orioles have a nest in the Shillig’s big wild cherry tree out by the peacock pen. There might be other nests too. There usually are others in the larger trees that I do not see until the fall when the leaves drop.

One of the chipping sparrow nests.

I am a sky watcher. I like to be out under the sky as much as possible and I watch to see what is going on above me. I try to be, as much as possible, outdoors to observe the sunrise and sunset, the moon rise and moon set, the stars and planets as the earth moves through its rotations and revolutions. I don’t know if there is a correlation between the solstices and sky color, but when I look back through photographs I’ve taken over the years, I have more sunrise and sunset photos in June and December than any other months. Last week almost every one was beautiful. There is a Celestial Event this week. If you go out a half hour before sunrise this Friday morning, and if your sky is clear, you will see an alignment of the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter over the eastern horizon with the crescent moon in line between Venus and Mars. I hope our sky will be clear that morning. I want to see that. I watched a short video illustrating the helical movement of our solar system with the sun moving through the galaxy and the planets spiraling around it. Seeing that makes an alignment like this one seem especially wonderful. The last time such an alignment occurred was in December 2004 and it won’t happen again until 2040.

A foggy sunrise last week.

A sunrise last week.

A sunrise last week.

A moon rise last week.

After basking in high heat earlier in the week, things cooled off a little too much. The forecast said our temperature last night was going to drop to 39°. Here in cold Gold, we usually take off an additional ten degrees and that would put us at 29° and that would be a garden disaster. I watered everything before dark and then prayed that the temperature would stay above freezing. When I went out this morning, the last Sabbath morning of spring, it was 38°, just six degrees above disaster. It’s going to stay on the cool side until Tuesday, the first day of summer when, appropriately, it will get warm again. I hope it stays that way until October.

We’re back from church. Today is Father’s Day and we had a special treat after Sunday School. Miriam made her luscious peanut butter brownies and handed them out to everyone who was or has a father. I hope to hear from my children and grandchildren during the day and later I will call and talk to my father. It’s a beautiful, bright day. After lunch I think I’ll go and sit in the garden and read. Good Sabbath!