Comings and Goings

We had a busy week. We had a lot of comings and goings. Stacey’s sister Roxann was with us most of the week. Rachel and four of her children arrived on Tuesday evening. On Wednesday night Tabor and Hazel arrived. Next door, Kurt and Julie’s daughter Kohl and her children were here. And Roxann’s daughter Missy and her family arrived on Wednesday. Roxann left on Friday morning. Our niece Kailie and her family arrived on Friday evening to spend the weekend. This was our last big wave of summer guests and, as always, the energy level was high all week.

I had a lot of high priority projects I wanted to accomplish in the garden last week. Here is my list:

Things To Do

□ Dig up the potatoes
□ Pull up the carrots
□ Pull up the beets
□ Pull up the onions
□ Gather poppy seed
□ Pick cucumbers
□ Pick peppers
□ Make relish
□ Make applesauce
□ Mow the orchard
□ Weed the asparagus patches
□ Trim garlic

Monday was rainy and I didn’t get to do much outdoors. Instead, we spent the day trying to put the kitchen back in order. We didn’t get very far. We decided we needed to line the shelves before loading all the dishes and other things back on them. I went into town and bought all the shelf liner I could find, but it wasn’t enough. We did what we could. We got a new supply of shelf liner on Tuesday and resumed the task. Things are almost all back where they belong now.

In the afternoon on Monday the rain stopped for a while and I went out to the big garden and began harvesting poppy seeds. I got a full pint jar full of seeds before the rain returned, about a tenth of the harvestable pods. We gathered the rest on Wednesday. Check one off the list.

The children gathering poppy seeds for me.

A pile of poppy seeds.

On Tuesday I waited most of the day for the lawn to dry out enough to mow it. The sun would shine for a few minutes and my hopes would rise, then clouds moved in again. The lawn stayed wet until the afternoon. While waiting to mow, I canned our first batch of applesauce. I picked a bucket of Duchess and Sops-of-Wine apples and turned them into thirteen pints of nice, smooth sauce. Another check mark.

Our first batch of applesauce.

Our raspberries are ripening and on Wednesday we picked a bowlful. We also picked the last of the blueberries. The blackberries are still blooming and there are lots of unripe berries. I hope the weather holds long enough to harvest them.

Roxann mixing a bucket of slop for the pigs.

The weather was cool most of the week – too cool. The temperature only rose into the low 60s during the day and the nights were cold. Thursday morning, it was 38° when I went out for morning chores and my walk. When I came back inside, I had to turn on the electric heater by my desk to warm my cold feet. It felt autumnal and I’m not ready for that. The signs of waning summer are all around us now. The goldenrod and the asters have begun to bloom. Our peacock has shed his luxurious tail feathers. The trees haven’t really started to change, but there are more leaves on the lawn than I like to see.

A bouquet of dahlias.

Goldenrod blooming in the orchard.

Thursday started off chilly, and only warmed into the 60s, but that was warm enough to make garden work pleasant. We worked hard that day at digging up potatoes. There were seven rows of them. I planted several different kinds – a purple variety, my favorite variety called German Butterball, a red skinned variety called Red Norland, and a white skinned variety. We got a good yield. I had lots of helpers. At the end of the day we bagged them up and put them in storage for the time being. Another item on the list checked off.

Digging potatoes with Aunt Roxann.

Potatoes all dug up.

Bagging potatoes.

We also picked all the cucumbers that day. The vines had died back. Many of the cucumbers were too ripe and large to use, so we fed them to the pigs. Even so, we ended up with a wagon full. That night Stacey and Roxann ground cucumbers, bell peppers, and onions for relish. I salted the mash and set it to rest overnight. Friday I spent several hours canning relish. I canned sixteen pints. We barely made a dent in the cucumber pile. Two more check marks.

Picking cucumbers.

Grinding relish.

It was cold on Friday morning, 38° again. We’re at the point in the year where I’m up well before sunrise. I’m back to dressing in the dark. I like to tell people that I get up with the chickens, but for most of the year, from late August to late April, I get up before they do. As the day went on, things started to warm up again and it ended up being a very pleasant day. I spent most of the day with Tabor. We went shopping at the Amish. We drove out to visit our friends Bob and Nancy Jones. Tabor wants to hunt on their property when the season opens and he put up a trail camera to see where the deer frequent. He also put a camera in my orchard. I know the deer come into the orchard every night. I see the apples they’ve been eating and droppings they leave, but I never actually see the deer.

Another bouquet of dahlias.

Yesterday, Saturday, was full of activities. A group of mostly adults went antiquing up in Angelica, New York. They were gone from 9:00 until 2:00. I didn’t go with them. I spent the day in the garden deadheading flowers and weeding. Tabor and I trimmed garlic. Then Tabor, Florence and I pulled up all the onions – two more items off the list. It was a nice day. The weather warmed a little, but there is definitely an end of summer feeling in the air. With the potatoes, cucumbers, onions, and poppies all harvested, I’m ready for those gardens to be tilled and prepared for winter. We completed seven of the twelve things on my list and that's pretty good.

A basket of trimmed garlic.

Florence helping pull onions.

That afternoon I started to feel like I was coming down with something. I was achy, feverish, and starting to cough. By dinnertime, I gave up and went to bed. I hate being sick. It’s even worse when we have family visiting and I can’t join in any of the goings on. I didn’t go to church today. I just lay abed and wallowed in my misery. I’m hoping this will pass quickly. In fact I feel a lot better already, but I’m not going to overdo it.

The apples are coming along nicely.

Last week I read, as I often do in August, J. L. Carr’s A Month in the Country. I received that book back in the 80s when I belonged to a book club. I’d never heard of it until then, but I fell in love with it. It is a small and lovely book. In it, Tom Birkin, a veteran of the First World War and a recently failed marriage, arrives in the summer of 1920 in the rural village of Oxgodby in Yorkshire where he has been commissioned to restore a recently discovered medieval mural in the local church. Living in the bell tower, surrounded by the beautiful countryside, he slowly uncovers an anonymous painter’s depiction of the Last Judgment and finds as he works, that his own spirit has been restored and he is given new hope. But summer ends, the work is done, and he has to leave. Now, as an old man, he reflects on the passage of time, the power of art and love, and he finds in his memories some comfort for all that has been lost. That may not sound like a very compelling plot, but the book captures something, some feeling of poignant perfection, that makes me ache for a time and place I never knew. It only took me a day or two to read it and when I was done, I felt sad that it was finished, just as August makes me feel sad that summer is almost finished too. If you’ve never read it, I recommend it.

Sunset in the big garden.

It occurred to me as I was writing this, that we are actually entering the last week of August. I had to stop and reflect a moment, piecing the past month together in my mind to account for its passing. How is it possible? Summer rushes by in a flash of warmth and color. The chill of fall and what follows it creeps in too soon. The harvest time has come. Now we will be busy taking what we can from summer’s bounty and storing it away to sustain us in a harsher day. Already I can see the green world breaking down, easing toward the end and the fall and the long cold sleep beyond. The summer visitors are fleeing. The swallows and the red-winged blackbirds, the robins and the warblers and other summer birds are going or are already gone. And like them, I feel a longing to follow summer to its new home on the other side of the world.

Sunset in the long border.

Now our guests are all departing. This afternoon the Thayns and the Murrays are leaving. The Shillig’s guests will depart – Missy and her family on Tuesday, and Kohl and her children on Wednesday. With just the four of us here at our house, we will begin the bittersweet task of cleaning up, putting away summer things, and setting the house in order. I like restoring order, but at the same time, it means the festival days are at an end, and that makes me sad. School starts on Wednesday, but I don’t have anything to do with that anymore – an idea that still hasn’t completely sunk in yet, but I think I’ll be okay.