Monday was Memorial Day. The morning was warm and gray. The forecast said rain was coming at noon and I needed to cut the lawn. The grass was very tall and the dandelions even taller. I waited for the dew to dry, but the rain came early and the grass never dried and I didn’t get a chance to mow until later. It was a dull morning for a holiday. Several of the local parades were canceled in anticipation of bad weather. The parade in Ulysses wasn’t canceled, but we didn’t feel like standing out in the rain, so we didn’t go. The rain let up mid afternoon. After the weather began to clear, Miriam, Hannah, and I drove over to the Ulysses Cemetery to find some graves. Miriam likes to look at Find-A-Grave to see requests from people looking for certain graves. There were a lot of requests for Ulysses. We walked around looking at headstones and found five of them. My third great-grandparents, William Howe (1799 - 1874) and Mary Reniff (1807 - 1898) are buried there. I found their headstone. It is in bad shape, covered with lichens and barely legible. We will go over one of these days and clean it up.
 |
| Ulysses Cemetery. |
 |
| The grave of William Howe and Mary Reniff. |
When we got back from the cemetery, I checked the lawn and the grass was dry enough to mow. I jumped on the trusty Cub Cadet and mowed as fast as I could. It looked like the rain was about to start again. I was hoping for a Memorial Day cookout, but because we were gone until Sunday, we didn’t really plan anything. At the last minute Stacey put together a traditional Memorial Day feast of hot dogs and hamburgers. The Shilligs came over and brought a salad. It was pretty good for a last minute effort. The rain came in the night.
 |
| Memorial day after mowing. |
On Tuesday it was rainy off and on all day. I couldn’t bear to be trapped indoors. During any little lapse or when it was only drizzling instead of pouring, I went out. I made an inspection of the orchard and was pleased to find tiny apples on almost every tree. I walked along the flowerbeds and the vegetable patches, monitoring the progress of the plants. I did weed a little, but mostly I took note of the places to focus on once the rain was gone and things were dry again. There were some pretty monstrous weeds in places. The docks were gigantic. There are two kinds of dock that plague my garden, Bitter Dock (Rumex obtusifolius) and Curly Dock (Rumex crispus). They are both edible and nutritious and apparently some people actually like to eat them. I cut some and cooked them up to see how they taste. Like most leafy things that are good for you – like kale, collards, dandelion, and chicory – they are not delicious. They taste very green and are bitter and only made tolerable by lots of butter and salt. I will never grow them on purpose, but perhaps if a famine ever comes, I’ll eat them and be grateful. But not now. Now, they torment me. They come up in places where I don’t want them. They have long tap roots that are impossible to dig up. I cut them down to the ground over and over again all summer and I never let them bloom, but somehow they manage to spread anyway.
 |
| Little green apples. |
 |
| Docks growing in the middle of phlox patches - Bitter on the left, Curly on the right. |
 |
| An unpalatable bowl of dock. |
Tuesday night we got a call from our friend Ervin Gingrich saying his brother-in-law had gone to an auction downstate and would get three piglets for us. We set up our pigpen fence weeks ago, but had made no further preparations since then. So on Wednesday we went to work to get ready for the arrival of piglets. I brought the feeder and water barrel up from the barn where they’d been in storage for the last three years. I cleaned them and set them up in the pigpen. Then Kurt and I made a shelter in one corner of the pen. We used supplies we had on hand – boards, plywood, screws, wire, cardboard, zip ties, and a bale of straw – and made a pretty good shelter. In the end, there were no piglets for sale at the auction. Ervin says they will try again at another auction next week. We’ll be ready for them.
 |
| Our makeshift pig shelter. |
We had dinner at the Shillig’s that evening. As we were walking across the yard to their house, Kurt called out for us to look at the enormous wild cherry tree in their back yard. A huge branch of the tree had split off! I guess that branch was weak, but we didn’t know it. Perhaps the weight of the leaves with the rain on them was too much. We are sad about it. I hope the loss of that big branch doesn’t compromise the strength of the remaining tree.
 |
| The cherry tree before and after. |
Thursday morning was cool and foggy. I took my morning walk and got drenched to the knees in the tall grass in the orchard. As soon as the sun was up, the fog vanished and the day was bright and pleasant. I worked in the garden all day. In the afternoon we helped Kurt by hauling away the pieces of the downed cherry tree while he sawed it up. We added the bigger pieces to our woodpile. The smaller branches we piled out on the edge of the orchard where they will dry out in time for a Fourth of July bonfire.
 |
| Foggy morning walk. |
 |
| Foggy morning walk. |
 |
| Foggy morning walk. |
 |
| Cutting up the cherry limb. |
The forecast said the temperature on Thursday night would drop to 36°. We always subtract five or six degrees from the forecast and that meant it could get cold enough for a frost or even a freeze. Then later that evening the weather service issued the dreaded Official Frost Advisory. There was nothing much I could do to protect my garden and fruit trees. Everything was too far advanced to try and cover them. I went out with the hose in the evening and soaked everything hoping the saturated soil would hold a little warmth. And I started praying. I believe in the power of prayer, but I also know that our prayers are not always answered in the way we want. I always leave the outcome in the hands of God and ask for faith and understanding, no matter what happens. Maybe some higher purpose I can’t comprehend is served by blighting my garden and destroying my apple harvest with a late frost – again. Maybe the purpose is to blunt my pride and keep me humble.
 |
| Frost Advisory. |
 |
| Covering the sweet potato patch. |
In the wee hours of Friday morning I got up several times to check the temperature. At 2:00 it was 32°. At 4:00 it was 30°. At 5:00, when I got up for the day, it was 29°. I dressed and went out, fearful of what I would find. The lawn, the flowerbeds, the vegetable gardens were white with frost. I’d left the hose out from the night before and set it to drip so it wouldn’t freeze. I began spraying everything, hoping the water would defrost the plants before the sun rose and they turned to mush. The sunrise was pretty. By that time, my hands and feet were numb from the cold and the spray from the hose, so I took a quick walk down to the beaver pond and back to improve my circulation. Then I went back to spraying. After an hour, I stopped and went inside to shower and dress and wait to see what news the morning would bring.
 |
| Sunrise Friday morning. |
By the time we’d finished our morning scripture reading and family prayer it was 45° and I went out again to see how things had thawed. Some things got nipped – the kiwi vines, the little persimmon tree out in the orchard. It was too soon to tell with the apples. Often they look okay and then they all fall off a few days later. But so far, so good. I was really worried about the lilies in the long border. They suffered a little, but I think spraying them helped. I went out to the big garden and found that Kurt had run an extension cord out to the high tunnel and put a heater in there, so all those plants were fine. My sweet potatoes survived under their cover. The potatoes were damaged, but they will recover quickly. All in all, I think my prayers and feeble efforts had some effect and we were blessed.
 |
| Frost out in the big garden. |
 |
| Steam rising from the sweet potato covers. |
 |
| Frostbitten potato patch. |
Friday was a big day for one of our Big Projects. The men came and did our driveway. They were quick. It only took them an hour. They dumped a load of gravel and then spread it using a little Kubota dozer. I asked them if they could also scoop up and haul away the rock pile beside the driveway, twenty years worth of rocks picked from the garden. They scooped them up and took them away. So now we have a real gravel driveway, not a rutted mud pit and puddle. I’ll have to make a flowerbed or something where the rock pile used to be.
 |
| The new driveway. |
 |
| The new driveway. |
The temperature was supposed to be warmer over Friday night into Saturday, too warm for frost, but this being cold Gold, it went down to 31° and Saturday morning there was a light frost. It didn’t do much more damage than the previous night’s frost. That morning, I looked out the window in time to see a fox trotting up the road. We don’t usually see them in daylight unless they are sick or have become too accustomed to living around humans – both bad things. Sure enough, when I went down to do the morning chores, there was a dead hen. She was inside the coop and had been mauled. That means the fox waited until it was light enough for the automatic door to open and then went inside the coop and helped himself to a hen. I reset the coop door to open later in the morning and will be more vigilant now that I know a wily fox has figured out a way to get a quick meal.
And so we passed from May into June, not gently with a warm night and fireflies, but with a shiver and a touch of ice. I hope we’re done with that now. By midday on the first of June it was 80°. We went from frost in the morning to summer by the afternoon. That’s more like it. I love June. It’s the best of all the months of the year. The days are longest. The garden is full of flowers. We get to eat fresh strawberries. It is, to me, the perfect month. And as I do most years when June arrives, I have to quote Matthew Arnold’s tribute to the month from his poem Thyrsis.
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.
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.
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.
Those idyllic words penned in 19th century England, also describe 21st century Gold in these first fine days of June. And the high Midsummer pomps will soon come on in all their glory.
 |
| Part of the long border. |
 |
| The first rose of June. |
One of the things I especially love about June is that it is when the Dame’s Rocket blooms. Its scientific name, Hesperis matronalis, comes from the Greek word hespera, meaning evening, because its sweet fragrance is most pronounced in the evening. Matronalis is Latin and means “befitting a married woman,” in other words, a dame, a woman of high rank, not in the slang sense like sailors singing “There ain’t nothing like a dame.” Dame’s Rocket is in the brassica family like broccoli, cabbage, mustard, and so many other plants. The botanical term “rocket” is given to several members of the brassica family, like arugula, which is often called salad rocket. Dame’s Rocket blooms along the roadsides in beautiful drifts of white and pink and purple through most of the month of June. I let it bloom in the untended edges of the property where I travel on my evening walks to enjoy it.
 |
| A patch of Dame's Rocket. |
Saturday morning was errand time. Stacey and I made a trip to Wellsville to make our usual chicken food purchase. When we got back from that, I spent most of the rest of the day weeding – what else? It felt great to be working in the warm sunshine. After I finished the afternoon chores, I sat down to rest a moment – and woke up an hour later. A nap on a Saturday afternoon? Unheard of! But maybe I’ll do that more often.
Now it is the Sabbath. Church today was good. It was Fast Sunday. Stacey and I had to stay a little late and by the time we got home Miriam and Hannah had lunch ready, which was good because I was very hungry. In a few minutes I will go down to do the afternoon chores and, guess what – it has started to rain. The week ahead looks good. I have projects to work on. The weather looks good – some sunshine, some rain, no frost. And it’s June. Perfect.
