I tend to gush on and on about the month of June. If you’ve been reading this Journal for any length of time, you know that in my June entries I become quite effusive in its praises. I can’t help myself. Knowing that June will eventually come is what gets me through the interminable weeks of winter. I regard the all too brief seasons of spring and fall as the time when the world is moving toward and then away from June, the center of my year. June is a well behaved month. It is not as hot as the other summer months, July and August. It is mild and fine, lovely in all its aspects. Its trees cast perfect shade. Its lawns are green and lush and spangled with clover. Its weeds are not the rampant monsters of high summer. Its mornings are often cloaked in ground fog and always drenched in dew. Its evenings are made magical by fireflies and the melodious belching of bullfrogs from the pond across the road. It is the season of soft delights – fresh strawberries, tender lettuce, roses, poppies, and peonies. When I imagine the earth in its paradisiacal glory, it is in a state of perpetual June.
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| A morning's picking of strawberries. |
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| My old rose bush. |
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| Poppies. |
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| Poppies. |
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| And more poppies. |
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| A peony. |
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| And another peony. |
Even at its worst, June is better than the best days of December, January, or February. And yet, in spite of all of that, to me June is also the saddest month. It passes too quickly. It gives us the Summer Solstice, and then the beginning of the descent toward winter as the days start to grow shorter again. I am the sort of person who mourns the passing of summer even before it has begun. My sadness at its inevitable demise tints every moment and makes them precious to me because of their brevity.
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| At sunset. |
Monday was overcast and a bit muggy. I actually like that kind of weather. I had to spend that morning indoors with my houseplants. When I have my gardens outdoors to keep me busy, I sometimes neglect my houseplants. They needed a little care– a good soaking, a dose of plant food. I took them all off their shelves in the music room and set them on the dining room table. Then one at a time, I gave each pot a good soaking in a tub of water with a little plant food in it. While they were off their shelves, I took the opportunity to wash the windows and freshen the window frames, sills, and the shelves with a coat of paint. When I was done, everything looked bright and clean and the plants looked refreshed.
That done, it was time to go outside. I had trays of plants that needed to go in the ground. We were already a week past my usual Planting Out Day because of the cold snap at the end of May. I had empty spots in the flowerbeds where I’d pulled out spent early spring flowers – Johnny-jump-ups, forget-me-nots, and the dead leaves of crocuses and daffodils. I filled those empty spots with summer flowers – zinnias, celosia, four o’clocks, amaranths, and cleome. They won’t be in bloom until later in the summer after the poppy and lupine show is over.
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| One of my potted lilies in bloom at last. |
I had to go into town that afternoon for my semiannual teeth cleaning –not my favorite thing. But I compensated for it by taking Kurt’s truck and, while I was in town, buying two cubic yards of mushroom soil. Well, I bought two yards, but I could only take one. I had to go back again on Tuesday and get the second load. I also went to a nursery and bought a flat of flowers. When I got home, Hannah helped me shovel out the truck. I filled all sorts of containers with the mushroom soil and then planted tomatoes in some of them and stocks in one.
After dinner, Kurt, Stacey, Hannah, and I planted tomatoes out in the big garden – almost 80 of them! We set wire cages over them (thank you Bob and Nancy Jones!). Now come the weeks of tending them, pinching, feeding, watching for blight and blossom end rot and tomato worms. With some vigilance and the cooperation of the weather, we should have a bountiful harvest starting in August and going on to frost.
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Planting tomatoes.
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Tuesday was a beautiful day. It was a little misty in the morning when I took my walk. Soon after the sun was up, it warmed into the 80s. I went into town again and got the second load of mushroom soil. I spent the morning distributing it to various parts of the garden. It was hard, hot work. I had to take a little siesta during the hottest part of the day. After she got home, Hannah finished shoveling out the truck and then washed it. By the time she was done she was a mucky mess. I appreciate her help.
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| Out in the big garden. |
The unmowed orchard is at its best now. It is a diverse and complex ecosystem. There are many different species of grass growing there. I can identify five of them – Sweet Vernal Grass (Anthoxanum ororatum), Tufted Hairgrass (Deschamsia cespitosa), Orchard Grass (Dactylis gloerata), and Kentucky Bluegrass (Poa pratensis). The grasses are tall and green and in bloom right now with their fascinating flowers. The grass is filled with other plants and wild flowers like Starwort (Stellaria graminea), Yellow Woodsorrel (Oxalis dillenii), Hawksbeard (Crepis capillaris), Cleavers (Galium aparine), Meadow Buttercup (Ranunculus acris), and Meadow Rue (Thalictrum dioicum). There are corn poppies and wild lupine growing from seed that I planted. There are patches of comfrey and milkweed. In a few weeks it will all turn brown and I will do the first of the two yearly mowings – this one in late June and the other one in the fall. But until then, I love to walk the paths through tall grass and enjoy its beauty.
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| Tall grass in the orchard. |
The June flowerbeds are full of color. We’ve come to poppy time. The oriental poppies are a bit past their prime, but the common poppies are in full bloom and the opium poppies haven’t begun yet. The bearded iris are almost done, but the bright little Dutch iris are at their best now. The first of the peonies have opened with their wonderful fragrance. And the mock oranges have started to flower with their even more wonderful perfume.
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| Yes, more poppies. |
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| Part of the long border. |
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| Dutch irises in the long border. |
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| The old mock orange in bloom. |
After a very pretty sunrise, Wednesday was warm, overcast, and muggy all morning. I could tell without looking at the forecast that there was rain on the way. I worked all morning weeding, planting, and trimming, going as quickly as I could before the weather changed. I built the raised bed flower garden where the old rock pile was and planted sunflower and nasturtium seeds in it. Around noon the sky grew darker and the air grew still and heavy. I stopped my work at 1:30 and came indoors, sure the sky was about to pour down a deluge at any moment. I was worried the rain would come and spoil the project we’d planned later in the afternoon. Our friends the Nicholases were coming over at 3:00 with their chainsaws to cut up what was left of the Shillig’s downed tree limb. The missionaries were coming to help. We planned a picnic buffet of hot dogs, salad, watermelon, and brownies. Luckily, the rain held off. The Nicholases and the missionaries arrived at 3:00. The Shillig’s tree limb got cut up and carted away. The picnic buffet was great. And just as we finished it all – the rain arrived. Perfect.
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| Sunrise on Wednesday. |
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| Sawing the downed limb. |
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| Cutting up old logs in the orchard. |
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| Picnic dinner. |
It rained all morning on Thursday, but it was a warm, gentle rain. The garden loved it and I did too. In the afternoon, after the sky had cleared and the rain had dried, I mowed. I usually have a song stuck in my head while I’m mowing and I usually end up singing it aloud over and over again as I go. There’s never any particular reason a certain song emerges. I have a pretty extensive and eclectic mental library of songs and they just pop up at odd moments. That day the song was Old Man River from the musical Showboat. Any neighbor who overheard me bellowing it out Paul Robeson style as I mowed along probably thought I’d lost my mind.
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| A sunset last week. |
I had a nice bunch of spinach growing in one of my raised beds and I was looking forward to eating it. I didn’t like spinach when I was a child, but then I grew up. With the warm weather we’ve been having, the spinach suddenly began to bolt. The gardening gurus say that bolted spinach is too bitter to eat, but I decided to eat it anyway. Maybe mine would be different. Thursday, I picked a bunch of it and brought it in the kitchen. I picked off all the leaves and washed them in cold water. We were having meatloaf and potatoes for dinner that night and I thought the spinach would be a nice compliment. Just before it was time to eat, I quickly cooked the spinach in boiling salted water. Then I drained it and slathered it with butter and dash of salt. It was delicious. So much for the guru’s advice.
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| I planted my pumpkin patch. |
I’ve had some trouble down at the barn. In the last two weeks nine of my hens have been killed. Three in the previous week. I found the fourth one on Wednesday when I went into the coop to collect the eggs in the afternoon. I know that there was no dead hen that morning when I did the morning chores. Because I saw a fox going up the road one morning, I assumed it was the culprit. That meant that the fox went into the coop sometime between 8:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. in broad daylight, when I was already out and about. I never heard any kind of ruckus. Thursday morning when I went down at 6:00 a.m., there were four more dead hens. I found the bodies of two inside the coop and I could tell from the various feather colors in piles around the coop that at least two more were gone. And this time the nest boxes had been raided and there were broken shells everywhere taken from under the setting hens, one of which was injured. I couldn’t imagine a fox doing that, it seemed more like something a raccoon would do. That evening Kurt set up his biggest live trap outside the coop door, baited with a hot dog. Friday morning I went down extra early to check the trap. It was sprung, the hot dog was gone, but the trap was empty. There was a skunky smell. So who was my killer – a fox? a raccoon? a skunk? There was one hen that refused to go inside the coop on Thursday evening. I tried, but she wouldn’t cooperate. I found her carcass on Friday morning over on the far side of the barn yard where it is secluded. I felt bad that she was killed, but she made some bad choices and bore the consequences.
Kurt set the trap again on Friday evening. Yesterday morning when I went down to the barn, there was a raccoon in the trap. It was pretty big. It was not happy to see me. We were too soft-hearted to kill it, even after all the killing it had done. Kurt drove it way up into woods miles and miles from here and let it go. We were not convinced that one raccoon was the only perpetrator, so we set the trap again last night. This morning there was a skunk in it. I threw an old tablecloth over the cage and set it in the shade on the edge of the meadow. After church, Kurt and I took it way into the woods along a gas pipeline road to set it free. Getting a skunk out of a live trap is tricky. Some people claim they will not spray when confined in a live trap. I know this to be untrue. Kurt opened the door to the trap and the skunk wouldn’t leave at first. Then it sprayed and ran out of the cage and into the woods. We hightailed it back into the truck and drove off choking. We weren’t hit directly by the spray, but we both stank a bit anyway. When we got back, I had to change clothes. Tonight we will set the trap again to see if anything else turns up. I hope we’re done with predators now. Oh, the joys of keeping chickens and living in the country.
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| The raccoon. |
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| The skunk. |
So we are done with church, and lunch, and the skunk. It’s already time to do the afternoon chores. There will be lots to do in the week ahead as the pace of gardening increases with every sunny day or rainy day or cloudy day – it just goes faster and faster. There will be some excitement here tomorrow. We are picking up three piglets tomorrow evening. Our friend Ervin was finally able to find some for us. So we will add tending pigs to the chore list. These are busy times and I love it.
