Hopeful Signs

My apple trees are mostly done blooming. Now comes the tense time when I wait and watch for the swelling that means the flowers were pollinated and fruit is forming. During blossom time the trees were filled with bees and that gives me hope. They were not honeybees – at least the ones I saw were not. We don’t see many honeybees these days. I miss the years when we kept hives. The bees I saw were bumblebees and solitary bees, both of which are excellent pollinators.

Blossoms and bees in the trees are hopeful signs. The fact that we haven’t had frost once in May (so far, knock on wood) is also a hopeful sign. I know that can change. Last year we had two frosts at the beginning of June that wiped out our apples. But last spring was, over all, a much colder spring than this year. We’ve had days in 80s this spring, a rare thing. Last week Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were all wonderfully warm.

I see hopeful signs all around me – things that might seem insignificant to other people, but to this gardener, bring optimistic expectations for beauty and bounty in the days, weeks, and months ahead. Things like fat peony buds with no sign of the botrytis blight that ruined them last year. And many iris stems rising with the promise of flowers when last year we had just one sad blossom. And potato shoots that seemed to burst from their rows just a few days after we planted them. And thousand of poppy seedlings sprouting in unexpected places.

This has been the most fragrant spring I can remember. The days have been warm and still and the scents of the different flowers seem to settle over the whole yard in an intoxicating perfume, a mix of lilac, lily-of-the-valley, apple blossom, raspberry leaf, and azalea. The moment I step out into the yard, the fragrance fills my lungs. The Japanese have something called shinrin-yoku where a person spends time in the forest to breathe the air. They say that breathing the forest air, filled with the volatile oils from the trees and plants, improves your mood, boosts your immune system, reduces blood pressure, and renews your energy.  I don’t know if my garden air has actual medicinally beneficial properties, but it certainly has psychologically beneficial properties. It’s like breathing happiness. I wish I could capture it in a bottle to restore me in bleaker times like Mr. Jonas in Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine.

The woodland garden with bluebells, lily-of-the-valley, and azalea.

Monday as soon as the dew was dry, I mowed. The grass was tall and shaggy with dandelion stems. I had to use the grass catcher so I wouldn’t have to rake and that makes mowing take twice as long. But it was a beautiful morning and I didn’t mind a chance to work in the sunshine. It was a warm day. The temperature rose into the 80s, which is well above average for May here.

After I finished mowing, I weeded the new asparagus rows out in the big garden. Those rows are near the old lilac hedge along the woodland garden where the lily-of-the-valley and the woodland azaleas are in bloom. On my hands and knees, with my fingers in the soil and my face to the earth, weeding became, as it often does for me, a philosophical meditation. Although weeding there is hard, the touch and smell of the soil combined with that wonderful fragrance of the flowers put me in a tranquil state of mind. Those asparagus rows are only a few years old and we haven’t started harvesting them yet. The weeds there were thick and stubborn. I thought for a while how there must be a way to make the work easier. And that started me down a long and deep mental path. I think that making things easier often leads to trouble. I’ll admit that I do like having a riding mower, but I know that when I use my old push reel mower, the grass looks nicer. I know there are chemicals that will kill weeds, but they will also kill other unintended things, including me. Some things are best achieved by hard, manual labor. My sometimes lamented and miserable weeding has brought me intimate familiarity with the little nooks and crannies of my garden. Sometimes small and manageable is the best way to do things. When things get so big that the only way they can be done requires dependence on big machines and strong chemicals, when quantity takes priority over quality, the natural balance tips toward disaster. All this I pondered while pulling weeds on a warm and fragrant, perfect day in May.

Later that afternoon I prepared the bed for the sweet potatoes. The slips had been sitting in a jar of water on the kitchen window sill all that time and they needed to go in the ground. I laid down black landscape cloth out in a corner of the big garden near the pigpen and the high tunnel. Sweet potatoes like heat and that spot gets sunshine all day. The black cloth will keep weeds down and heat the soil up. This is our first serious attempt to grow sweet potatoes. I’m excited to try and hope for success. Later that evening, garden work continued. Kurt planted corn while Stacey and Miriam helped me plant a row of dahlias. We’re growing our dahlias in one of the long rows of the big garden this year. We’re hoping they will give us thousands of flowers all summer.

Weeded asparagus beds.

Newly planted sweet potato patch.

Tuesday was another beautiful day, more like summer than spring as we hit the mid 80s again. The weather made me feel bold enough to risk planting out some things. My traditional planting out day is around Memorial Day, but I have hope that we are in the clear now. It’s only a week early. I planted sweet peas along the fence in the driveway flowerbed. I planted a big pot of purple petunias. Out in the big garden, Kurt and I planted cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli. We thought about it, but decided not to plant out tomatoes and peppers. We didn’t feel that bold. We will wait another week.

Wednesday morning was lovely and I took a longer walk at sunrise. I went up the road along the beaver pond to Burrell’s and back again. I noticed as I walked that the beavers have been busy and have extended their pond building further up the Genesee stream all the way to the back side of Burrell’s. They’ve made a series of connected ponds that are full of life – geese, ducks, kingfishers, herons, and frogs. It is beautiful to see how they have transformed the landscape.

On my morning walk: the beaver pond.

On my morning walk: looking across Gold.

On my morning walk: looking west at Burrell's pond.

On my morning walk: looking east at Burrell's pond.

On Thursday we left for North Carolina to attend my niece Laura, my sister Hollie’s youngest daughter’s, wedding. We left home at 8:00 a.m. and drove nine hours to an Airbnb in Rocky Mount.  Our Airbnb was very nice, in a pretty neighborhood near the church. We settled in and went to bed. Nine hours in the car is pretty exhausting.

On Friday morning, after breakfast, we went over to Hollie and Jim’s house. We sat an visited a while, got caught up on what was going on in the family. At noon we dropped my mother off for her weekly hair appointment and went over to the church to decorate the cultural hall for the wedding reception. That took most of the afternoon. After that we had Hollie, Jim, my mother, and our nephew Ryan over to our Airbnb for dinner. Stacey’s friend Ann, who lives in Chapel Hill, joined us. Hannah made pizza. We had root beer floats. It was a pleasant evening.

Stacey and Ann, friends since 5th grade.

Saturday was the wedding. We drove down to the Raleigh Temple. It is a beautiful building. There Laura and Brandon were sealed as husband and wife for time and all eternity. I love the simplicity and the profundity of that ordinance, a covenant full of unimaginable promises. After that we took some photos outside the temple and then went back to the chapel at Rocky Mount. Because many of Laura and Brandon’s friends are not members of the church and could not go into the temple, they also had a ring exchange ceremony at the reception. The cultural hall was full of friends and family. It was a nice event. Our dear friend Linda Brooks, who was the midwife who delivered six of our eight children – and also Laura, the bride – was there. She flew in from Utah to be with us. After the reception, she came back with us to our Airbnb and spent the night in one of the spare bedrooms. We drove over to a park in the evening and took a walk around the lake there. We had a great evening getting caught up.

Miriam and Hannah with their grandma at the temple.

Brandon and Laura at the temple.

The ring ceremony.

Miriam, Laura, and Hannah with Linda, the midwife who delivered them.

With Mama at the reception.

Sunday we got up and went to church. We only went to the first hour sacrament meeting. Then we said a quick good-bye and left for home. I’m glad it was a quick good-bye that we could not linger over. One of the things my mother and I have in common, out of so many, is that we do not handle good-byes very well. But I reminded Mama that we would see her again soon in August when we go down for the family reunion. And then we drove nine hours home again. We got here at dark last night, unpacked, and retired. It was great to spend a few days with family and to be part of Laura and Brandon’s wedding.

Saturday, besides now being an important day for Laura and Brandon, was a very important day for me and Stacey. It was our 40th anniversary. Even as I write that, it seems impossible that it has been that long. We were married in the Los Angeles Temple at 5:25 on 5/25/1984. We didn’t plan for the time to match the date, it was just a coincidence, but a happy one. Now forty years later, here we are. We have seven grown up children and nine grandchildren. We managed to survive sixteen years moving around in Southern California to finally arrive here where we have now lived for twenty four years. It has been an adventure – the greatest of my life – not always easy, but in the end relatively smooth and filled with unnumbered blessings. After those heavenly blessings, I owe any smoothness or success to my wife, who is the greatest blessing of my life. I never would have made it this far without her strength and wisdom and perseverance. After forty years, what lies ahead for us? Who can tell? But I foresee more family, more adventures, more gardens, more celebrations, more life. And who could ask for anything more? Not me.

Our engagement picture.

Forty years later.

So here we are home, then away, and then home again. Everything looks good, Kurt did a good job tending to the chickens and the gardens while I was away. Today is Memorial Day and no one has to be anywhere. I have things to do. The lawn is shaggy again and we are supposed to get a thunderstorm around noon, so I will go out and mow as soon as the grass is dry. While I wait for that, I will go down and visit my flock. I like to think they missed me while I was gone, but they probably just want a morning treat. Then away we go into the last week of May – a month that passed by too quickly, but next comes June, the loveliest month of the year.