Changing Seasons

The week seemed short. Arriving home from the Thayns' house on Monday afternoon seemed to clip off part of the week and speed up what was left after it. I found myself scrambling to find time for all the things I wanted to accomplish. Summer is over. The equinox doesn't arrive until Tuesday, but the season has already departed. I'm not ready to face the cold days yet. Am I ever?

On Tuesday morning, I stepped out just before dawn intending to take my walk. I was in short sleeves. The cold was like a slap in the face. I went back inside and checked the temperature. It was 35°. I put on my fleece-lined hoodie, but I didn't resume my intended walk. Instead, I turned on the heater by my desk and hunkered over it while I checked my emails, the news, etc. When Stacey and Hannah left for work, there was frost on the windshield of the car. I went out to the garden and couldn't see any sign of frost. I came back inside and didn't venture out again until 9:00 when the world had finally warmed to 55°.

While I waited for the warmth, I worked at transcribing my old journals. I had reached 1987 by then, the year that Rachel was born. It seemed fitting, having just been to the birth of Rachel's sixth child. They have finally settled on a name for her, Iris Elizabeth Thayn. As soon as I found out, I went online and looked for varieties of iris with 'Elizabeth' in their name. There are several. I want to add them to my garden. All of Rachel's girls have a floral element in their names. In my gardens I already have hazels and roses (Hazel Rose), a juniper (Juniper Louise), and ferns (Mabel Fern). I don't have a myrtle (Florence Myrtle) because they don't grow here. Maybe I should try growing one in a pot. So adding some 'Elizabeth' irises is perfect.

Iris Elizabeth Thayn.

The dew was finally dry at noon and I had to mow. September is usually when mowing grass turns into mowing leaves as the grass stops growing and the leaves start falling. The leaves are falling, but the grass is still growing like it's May. I finished with my yard, but the Shilligs' and the Fosters' yards needed it too and I was tired of sitting on the mower. When Stacey got home, she said she would mow. She's never used the Cub Cadet before, so I gave her a quick lesson and off she went. By dinner time she'd finished everything but the front of the Fosters' property where the bank down to the road is scary steep.

Wednesday was a warmer day, but with the warmth came rain. It didn't arrive until later in the day, so I had time to work in the garden. I'm at the ripping up, tearing down, and clearing out stage for a lot of things. I pulled up spent plants, tore down collapsed vines, and cleared a bed for planting garlic. Our main tomato crop was severely damaged by blight. We lost nearly all the fruit. The tomatoes in my raised-bed garden have survived the blight so far. We picked a bucket of them Wednesday afternoon and made sauce. The cauliflower and broccoli are done and I've begun pulling them up and sending them to the compost pile. We've harvested all the corn. The green beans are gone and the dry beans are almost ready to pull up to dry. I cut all the pumpkins from their vines. Most of them will be processed for food, the rest will be decorations.

My pumpkin harvest.

In the flowerbeds, almost everything is finished or at least past its prime. The zinnias and cosmos still look good. The colchicums have started to bloom. They are the flower season's last hurrah. They're a little early this year. They usually don't bloom until the end of September and beginning of October. I won't take their earliness as a sign of any sort.

Some of my zinnias.

Cosmos.

A bed of colchicums.

I have three types of colchicum.

After much perseverance and a good amount of carnage, I think we've licked the rat problem down in the barn. I haven't seen any evidence of activity for two weeks now. I'm not taking any chances, though. I still have traps and poison bait set out, just in case. Since the rats are gone, chicken food consumption has decreased considerably. It looks like the rats were eating more than the chickens.

Thursday was warm and humid. It drizzled off and on through the day, a soft, misty drizzle. Wonderful weather. I worked in the garden and sweated all day and it felt good. I brought in all the pumpkins, washed them in vinegar water and set them on the back porch. We will wait until later to process the edible ones. 

Pumpkins on the back porch.

More pumpkins.

Friday was wet and gray. It rained hard during the night and the day never completely dried out. It felt very autumnal. I spent the morning working on transcribing old journals again. By then I was in 1990. I was in the bishopric in the Sylmar Ward and was released in May of that year. I got my undergraduate degree and began my postgraduate work. We already had Geoffrey, Rachel, and Sarah, and then Miriam was born in June. It was a busy time.

Working on these journals can be almost traumatic for me at times. Those early years of our marriage when we were so poor, and I was in school, and we had young children were hard at times—from what I wrote, maybe all the time. Reading my words now, I'd forgotten how much I agonized over things back then. The pages of these journals were my therapy where I wrote what I usually could not or would not say aloud. But there is a lot of happiness in them too. Those were times when most of my immediate family lived close enough that we could get together often. Now we are scattered across the continent and seldom all in one place at the same time.

By noon the sky had cleared and I went out at last. Everything was still too damp to do much. Later in the afternoon, Sarah came over and we worked in the big garden. We took down the protective arches we had made over the tomato row. Despite all our attempts to save them, the tomatoes in the big garden were wiped out by late blight. We barely got any fruit from them. 

Taking down the tomato covers.

Sad, blighted tomatoes.

We also worked on the fenced yard for her guinea flock. We covered it with net to keep them from flying out, and to keep undesirable things from flying in. We let them out into their yard and they were pretty happy. When it came time for them to roost for the night, they didn't know to go back into their pen. Sarah had to catch them and put them back. They aren't very bright.

Hannah left to go down to the Thayns' after work on Friday. Miriam was down there all week. So it was just me and Stacey here this weekend. On Friday night we went on a date to the movies. We saw The End of Oak Street. It was fun and sometimes gave us a jump scare, but it had terrible problems with time-travel paradoxes. That's something movies seldom get right. That always bugs me. But it was a fun date.

There was a beautiful sunrise yesterday. I could see the glow of it on the walls inside the house and dressed quickly and went out to enjoy it. While I was down at the beaver pond, I finally saw a beaver swimming around. I was glad to see it. I was afraid they'd abandoned their pond.

Sunrise on Saturday.

Sunrise over the beaver pond.

Later in the day on Saturday, Sarah and Tosh came over. We worked some more on making room in their chicken coop for their guinea flock. We divided the interior of the coop into two parts and made accommodations for the guineas in the new half. I also worked some more on dismantling the tomato row in the big garden. Stacey spent the day in the kitchen turning tomatoes into sauce. She finished twelve quarts.

Working inside the Fosters' chicken coop.

The new dividing wall.

Stacey cooking tomatoes all day long.

Twelve quarts of tomato sauce.

This Sabbath morning was dark, gray, and wet. It had rained all night. It was still drizzling when I went down to do the morning chores. I came back to the house and put on a long queue of Tabernacle Choir music to lift the mood. I love hymns. After I was dressed and ready for church, I sat down, as I do every morning, to look at the news. I only glanced at the first two headlines and stopped. I didn't feel like wallowing in all of that on the Sabbath. The day was already dark enough. Instead, I turned up the volume on my hymns.

This evening, just before sunset, Yom Kippur begins. It is the holiest day of the year for the Jews. When the Lord revealed His law to Moses, He commanded: And this shall be a statute for ever unto you: that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, ye shall afflict your souls, and do no work at all, whether it be one of your own country, or a stranger that sojourneth among you: For on that day shall the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the Lord. It shall be a sabbath of rest unto you, and ye shall afflict your souls, by a statute for ever (Leviticus 16:20-31). To atone is to suffer the penalty for sins and, through that suffering, be made clean and reconciled to God. It is the central doctrine of the gospel, that Christ, the only one capable of carrying the burden of our sins, paid the penalty through His suffering, and by our repentance and, through his mercy and grace, we can be redeemed and reconciled with God. Today in sacrament meeting, we partook of the emblems of Christ's death and suffering so that we can always remember what He did for us and strive to repent and be made clean through His infinite atonement. It is a beautiful and wondrous gift to us. I felt the power of it strongly today.

Church is done and we are home. Our meetings were good—good talks, good lessons, and good people. I love our little branch. I noticed trees with leaves changing already as we drove home today. Stacey is making lunch now. Later on, Hannah and maybe Miriam will be home. The day is still gray and drizzly, the perfect sort of day for an afternoon nap. The week ahead looks to be pretty rainy, but I'll do what I can to continue harvesting and getting the garden ready for its winter sleep. I hate to think about that, but it is coming, so best to accept it and prepare.

Several Types of Labor This Week

Monday was Labor Day, a sad holiday to me. I know it was originally designated as a day to celebrate the working people who built America, but it has never really meant that to me. To me it is the holiday marking the end of summer. The day began cold, foggy, and dripping with dew. I was shivering as I went down to do the chores and take my morning walk, but I had to admit the sunlight shining through the fog was beautiful. I saw a fog rainbow, an arc of faint color to the west over the beaver pond. I tried to photograph it, but it didn't work.

Across the front yard, Monday morning.

The beaver pond.

Coming back through the meadow.

Early that morning, Sarah and Tosh left to go downstate for a few days. They dropped their dog, Maverick, off here, and picked up a load of produce from our garden to take to the Thayns. 

A wagonload of produce for the Thayns.

Holiday or not, I had things to do on Monday—lots of labor, which seemed an appropriate way to spend the day. It was 38° at sunrise, so I waited until the day had warmed a little before starting. While I waited, I looked at bulb catalogs. It's that time of the year when the fall bulb catalogs begin to arrive in the mail. The timing is perfect. The bulb companies know that, of course. With this year's garden winding down, they know a gardener's heart turns toward visions of spring. I know mine does. While I'm clearing away the wreckage of this year's garden, all I can think of is what I need to plant now, in the dying days, that will fill these beds with flowers when the world wakes up again. Crocuses, tulips, daffodils, squill, fritillaries, snow drops, hyacinths, muscari—the very names fill me with hope as I utter them. To put dormant bulbs in the earth in September and October is an act of faith that spring will come again. I receive a dozen catalogs and I read each one, cover to cover—some of them several times. Then I make a list of the things that appeal to me—tulips in a certain color range, a new daffodil, more purple and white crocuses. And can you ever have too many hyacinths? I compare prices among the different catalogs, and compile my list. It always starts out overly ambitious—and too expensive. Sadly, affordability is the biggest limiting factor in my planning. If I had a million bucks, my yard would look like Keukenhof. But I do what I can.

Keukenhof Gardens in The Netherlands.

By 9:30 it was 55°, and that was good enough. I had a list of projects to work on. I chose mulching first. Between cutting down our two maple trees and Fosters cutting down ten pine trees and chipping all the branches, I had two large piles of mulch to use. I'd already used some of it—maple chip mulch in the front flowerbed and around my fruit trees, and pine chip mulch on the blueberry rows—but there was still a lot left. I carried maple mulch by the bucketful and spread it under the trees at the edge of the front yard along the road. They cast shade and the grass doesn't grow well under them, so I mulched there. In the woodland garden, I have two woodland azaleas that like acidic soil, so I mulched under them with pine chips. Then Kurt came over with his tractor and moved the rest of the maple mulch. He dumped some on the path that leads to the upper part of the barn. It runs between two fences that go around that chicken yard. I call it the alley. Now it is covered with a nice layer of chipped maple. Next I weeded my blackberry row along the edge of the orchard and mulched it with pine mulch. I like having piles of mulch at my disposal.

The mulched alley.

We had a cookout over at the Shilligs at noon. Kurt and Julie are temple workers at the Palmyra Temple and they invited a couple, fellow workers, who are on a temple mission from Arizona, to join us. We had hot dogs, hamburgers, watermelon, pistachio salad, pasta salad, potato salad, deviled eggs, seven layer salad, and baked beans—an all-American menu. 

Labor Day cookout on the Shillig's porch.

At 3:00 the power went out. There was an accident up the road. Someone hit a telephone pole. The power was off for several hours. I was out in the garden all that time, so I didn't really notice. Hannah was in the middle of doing her laundry and, with no electricity, had to resort to hanging her clothes out on the clothesline to dry. Primitive living. Later that afternoon, Kurt and I started digging up potatoes. We only harvested part of the smaller potato patch. We got a bushel of nice red potatoes. We still have half the small patch and all of the big patch to harvest. That's going to be a lot of potatoes.

The first potatoes.

At the end of the day, as I often do, I went out to sit in the garden and watch the day close down. I have a chair in my vegetable garden beside some washtubs planted with petunias where I usually sit. There are other places where I could sit, but the petunias are fragrant in the evening and I love their scent, so that's where I sit.

My seat by the petunias.

In September, I really begin to mind the shortening of the days. The mornings are so dark now. During the month, we will lose about 77 minutes of daylight—more than an hour lost to the dark. That makes every hour of light seem even more precious to me. I hate wasting daylight. I want to go outside as soon as I can, but unfortunately, with the decreasing hours of sunshine, the earth is also cooling. Mornings are very chilly now and very dewy. I find myself waiting for things to get warmer and drier before beginning the day. To keep from fussing during the idle time, I created a project. I found that there is a program online that will read scanned copies of my handwritten journals and transcribe them into editable text. I dug out the box from under the eaves that contains my journals and began scanning pages. The online program lets me do 50 pages a month for free, and I'm cheap, so that's the pace I'll be moving at.

Tuesday's big project was fortifying the chicken coop against rats and anything else that thinks it can tunnel under the wall. I went down in the morning and dug a trench along the front foundation and pulled out all the cinderblocks and stones that I'd piled there over the years. Later Miriam came down and helped me. We rolled out hardware cloth, bent it into an "L," and laid it in the trench. Then we set cinderblocks on it and filled in the trench. We had some leftover hardware cloth, so we replaced the plastic screen on one door with it. It was a long, dirty, and hot project, but I'm glad it's done. I haven't found a rat, trapped or poisoned, in a week. I hope our Chicken Fortress will be able to withstand any further invasions.

The fortified front of the chicken coop.

I ran errands on Wednesday and when I got back, I spent the afternoon mowing. I can't believe how the grass is still growing. We should be approaching the end of the mowing season, but it's growing like it's May. I was glad I finished mowing that afternoon because later it rained.

Thursday evening our friends the Lewises came for dinner. Al's 90th birthday was on Saturday and we wanted to celebrate with them. We had meatloaf, potatoes, baked cauliflower, tomatoes, watermelon, and for dessert, peanut butter brownies. Many of the menu items came straight from the garden. We had a pleasant evening eating and chatting.

On Friday afternoon, we left to go down to the Thayns' house. Rachel was scheduled to have her baby on Saturday and we wanted to be there. We left home at 4:00 laden with produce from the garden. The drive is long—four-hours—and uncomfortable for me. About half-way there, I can't find a comfortable position to sit in anymore. I try to sleep most of the way if I can. We arrived at the Thayns' at 8:00 and settled in for the night.

Rachel and Tabor went to the hospital around noon on Saturday. At the house, we worked on projects, cleaning, playing, waiting for any news. At 5:00 nothing much was happening at the hospital. Stacey and I went over for a short visit. They had Rachel on an oxytocin drip, but labor hadn't begun yet. We came back to the house and waited some more. By bedtime, nothing had happened. At 2:00 Sunday morning, the baby was finally born. She weighed 9 pounds, 7 ounces, and was 21 3/4 inches long.

The last photo of the family with only five children as they leave for the hospital.

Sunday morning at the house we all dressed and went to church. On the way home from church we stopped at the hospital to meet the new baby. Rachel looked good. The baby was adorable. We took turns holding her and cooing over her. I forgot how very precious new life is. You might be wondering why I refer to the baby as just the baby. As of this writing, they still hadn't settled on a name for her. No matter what she will be called, she is a precious and welcome addition to our family. She is our tenth grandchild.

Saying hello to the new one,

Meeting her grandpa.

A happy grandma.

After our visit, we came back to the house, had lunch, and went on with the day. We decided to stay another night. This morning Stacey, Hannah, and I left to come home. We left Miriam there to help out for the week. Rachel and the baby were due to be released later in the afternoon. We arrived home at noon. Stacey and Hannah went to work for the rest of the day. I worked on some laundry, took a tour of the garden, went down to visit the chickens, and here I am, finishing the journal. So we are home and unpacked, and at the start of a new week. It looks like the week ahead will be mild and good working weather. That's good because I have plenty of work to do.

Welcome to September

I try not to let the weather influence my mood too much, but if you are familiar with my journals at all, you know I'm not very good at it. The week was supposed to be rainy. All three of the weather sites I check agreed. So I knew I wouldn't be able to do most of the things I needed to do in the garden. The potatoes needed to be dug up, and you can't do that when the ground is wet and muddy. Well, you can, but it's miserable work, and the potatoes are filthy and have a greater tendency to rot if you do. The grass was going to grow like mad and we wouldn't be able to mow. There were beans, corn, and raspberries that needed to be picked. It looked like it would all have to wait, and waiting meant they might be past their prime by the time we could harvest them. Part of my brain said, be the dedicated and diligent gardener and just get wet. The other, practical—or perhaps lazy—part said, you could get pneumonia working in the rain, or at least be uncomfortable. I brooded on all of that as I looked out Monday on a gray, rainy, dismal morning. I had a fit of pre-frustration, a whole week's worth of exasperation lodged in my brain. I needed to find a way to brighten the atmosphere, at least in the confined space of the rooms where I was hunkered on a dank and dismal Monday morning.

I needed music. But what music? That set off another fit of unsatisfied brooding. I scanned all my music files. Nothing appealed. I went to YouTube and looked through my usual categories. No. Then I remembered my old record collection on the shelf in the music room. A few months ago, after many years of neglect, I'd set up my stereo and brought down my records, but hadn't used them much since then. I went in and sat down and began to look at the albums. I've been working on editing my journals, and I suppose that put me in a nostalgic mood to begin with, but looking at those albums was like reading pages of my life. I didn't even listen to the music. The record jackets were enough. I could tell a story for almost every one of them—where I lived when I acquired it, what I was doing with my life at the time. I spent several hours looking through them. It was entertaining, nostalgic, and a bit melancholy at the same time. In the end, I chose the recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Major, Op. 64 and Bruch's Scottish Fantasia, Op. 46, performed by Campoli and the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. The album was a Christmas gift from my parents in 1971, when we lived on Campbellsport Road in Ravenna, Ohio. We only lived in that house a year and that was the only Christmas we had there. As I listened, all the associated memories of that time and place came rushing through me.

My stereo and record albums.

My oldest album.

The year we lived in that house has taken on an idyllic glow over the years. We lived there from August 1971 to August 1972. The house was in the country on an acre of land. We had only a few neighbors, most of them nice except for the hillbillies that lived next door. We were surrounded by farmland and forest. Just down the road was the West Branch Reservoir. We explored the woods and the reservoir and rode our bikes countless miles over country roads. There was trouble while we lived there. We had problems with the neighbors. I cut my foot and spent most of my second summer there on crutches. But my memories of that time are mostly good. I loved living out in the country. We moved from that house to Naperville, Illinois, at the beginning of my freshman year in high school, where a whole new world opened to me. All of that was stirred up in me from an old record.

The house on Campbellsport Road, 1971.

It stopped raining for a while later on Monday afternoon. I hurried out and did the chores and then went out to the big garden to pick raspberries while I could. They are a delicate fruit and spoil very quickly, so I was glad to get a bowlful. Raspberries are one of the few fruits I'm allowed to indulge in. Luckily, they are also a favorite of mine. If I had to name a fruit flavor as my favorite, it would be raspberry, but I don't like the little seeds. As I was coming back to the house, I found one of those accidental bits of beauty that I love. Along the edge of the orchard there are a few blackberry plants. They never give much fruit and I don't pay much attention to them, but that afternoon they stopped me in my tracks. There was a perfect white blossom on a sprig with pink buds and small green berries. It made me think of the apple blossoms we didn't have this year because of the cold. 

Raspberries in the big garden.

My afternoon pickings.

Blackberry flower.

Sarah dropped in after dinner and we went out to harvest some things before the rain began again. We picked strawberries, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, and corn. The highlight of the evening was picking and eating the first ripe cantaloupes and a watermelon. Melons are not easy to grow here. Most years they don't have time to ripen before cold weather comes. This year, we've been blessed. We brought the melons in from the garden, sliced them, and ate them straight away. They were perfect, juicy, and sweet. The rain returned just before sunset.

The evening's pickings.

The first melons of summer.

Tuesday was the first of September and, although it didn't feel very different from the August days that preceded it, mentally it was different. September always has a shifting feeling to it. My brain knows that summer will end during the month and I become attuned to anything that indicates even a slight change in that direction—an increase in the number of leaves on the lawn, the disappearance of the swallows, goldenrod starting to bloom more abundantly.

A patch of goldenrod at the edge of the orchard.

Tuesday morning when I checked the forecast, it had changed—not much chance for rain during the day, it said. I was pleased. When I went down to the barn to do the morning chores, the garden was still wet from Monday's rain and a heavy dew. I fed the chickens, checked my rat traps (all empty), and came back inside to wait for things to dry out a little before going out to work. My garden plans were delayed by a trip to the gym. After we got home, I went to work right away. I saw that the rain was expected to return that night, so I hurried and mowed the lawn. After mowing, I spent the rest of the afternoon in the garden.

After she got home from work later that afternoon, Stacey and I went out to run errands. We drove into Ulysses to the bank, then out to the Amish bulk food store on Fox Hill, and then to the dairy on the Pusher Siding Road. As we were coming home, the National Weather Service issued an Emergency Weather Bulletin stating we could expect high winds and possibly a tornado. The sky was darkening to the northeast and we could hear distant thunder. When we got home, I went out to the garden to batten down the hatches. I moved all the top-heavy potted plants to sheltered spots so they wouldn't get blown over. I closed up the greenhouse. Miriam was out mowing next door and I walked over and told her she should stop and put the mower away. And then we waited. I've seen tornadoes before when we lived in Illinois—but never too close. Once when I was out at my friends' house on the flat farmland out of town, I raced a tornado home. I could see it in my rearview mirror, a couple of miles behind me. We don't often get tornadoes here in Potter County. We've had two touch down in the 26 years we've lived here. There wasn't one on Tuesday afternoon. I'm thankful for that.

Tornado warning to the east of us.

The storm missed us. It was like we were under a protective dome. There were dark clouds and lightning to the east, west, and south of us, but clear skies over Gold. After dinner we went next door to Fosters' and worked at chipping the huge pile of spruce branches. We worked until dark with lightning flashing in the gigantic clouds to the west of us.

Chipping branches.

Dramatic clouds at the end of the day.

I had a haircut appointment on Wednesday morning at 10:00. While I waited for it to be time to leave, I worked some more on editing my journal. By then, I was up to 1984, the first months of my marriage. My Grandad Rathfon had died just before Christmas. Stacey was pregnant with Geoffrey. We were living in a tiny apartment on Foothill Boulevard in Sylmar. I was working at a job in Hollywood that I did not like (what else is new), longing for better things for my new little family. As I was reading through these entries, there was a thunderstorm rumbling outside. And I was listening to music—Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 6 in E minor, one of my most beloved pieces of music. When it got to the third movement, "Romanze," I had to stop everything and just sit and listen. The combination of the journal memories, the thunder, and the music all swirling in my brain was perfect.

I had a pleasant visit with Dawn, the lady who cuts my hair. Her husband loves to fish and ties his own flies. I brought him all the tail feathers I'd collected from the peacock. Apparently they're good for making flies. Dawn and I always chat as she cuts my hair. I tell her what's going on in my family. She tells me what's going on in hers. We've been doing that for more than a decade.

The rest of the day was rainy. I went out into the garden during spells when it was just drizzling, thinking I could tolerate it, but I didn't get anything done except get wet. I finally gave up and came inside. The weather changed after dinner. There were enormous cloud formations to the east and west, but again, Gold was clear. We went out again to work at chipping spruce branches. Kurt got out his tractor and helped pull some of the larger branches from the pile. The branch pile shrunk slowly, while the chip pile grew quickly. As sunset arrived, the sky was lit with incandescent clouds filled with silent lightning. Around 8:00 the silence ended when the storm finally arrived in Gold. The wind blew hard and the rain came down in torrents. We had to get up and close windows. All night long there was almost continuous lightning, thunder, and pelting rain. A few times the thunder shook the house. It kept waking me up through the night. 

Clouds to the east on Wednesday evening.

Looking south down highway 49.

Working until dark.

Thursday morning was one of those mornings that only come after a summer thunderstorm. It was very warm, very humid, and very fragrant. The sun was shining, but more rain was on its way, and we were under a flood warning. I went out after my chores in the barn, thinking I would work in the garden, but I only lasted ten minutes. Stopping work because of heat and humidity is not something I usually do, but 85° and 80% humidity was too much. I retreated, first to the shade on the front porch, and then to the living room with a fan. At 2:00 I went out again to see if conditions were any better. They weren't. But I heard Kurt's music playing out in the big garden (he has a radio on the bike he rides around the property), which meant he was out there doing something in the heat, and I thought I'd better go see what. I found him on his hands and knees, picking green beans. He was just finishing that, and wanted to pick some sweet corn before heading back to this house. I helped him fill the wagon that he pulls behind his bike. By then we were both dripping sweat. He went home, and after picking an armload of cantaloupes, I went back inside to wait for the cool of the evening. Don't misunderstand, I'm not complaining about the heat and humidity. It's exactly what I want on a summer's day. Using it as an excuse to take it easy is a welcome rarity here.

Cantaloupes in the big garden.

After the heat of the day, working in the late afternoon and into the evening was delightful. I worked in my vegetable garden. I pulled up the rest of the carrots, picked the last of the wax beans and green beans, and pulled up the plants. Then I turned the soil in those beds and planted buckwheat. As I was finishing, the clouds were thickening and I heard distant thunder. Not long after I went in, the rain began.

The last of the beans.

It rained hard all night and Friday morning was fresh. The air felt soft and the sky was blue and full of creamy clouds. I went out, as I do every morning these days, to look at the morning glories. I planted the morning glories at the base of an arch that spans two different raised beds. One of the beds contained older soil that I hadn't improved in a few years. The other bed contained newer soil enriched with mushroom compost. I planted two kinds of morning glories—Heavenly Blue went in the rich bed, Flying Saucers went in the poor bed. I didn't know it then, but I do now, that morning glories prefer poorer soil. When the soil is high in nitrogen, like it is in the mushroom compost bed, they produce massive vines and leaves, but no flowers. I also discovered that Heavenly Blue morning glories usually don't start blooming until the days start to shorten. So the Flying Saucer side of the arch is blooming and the Heavenly Blue side has yet to give me a single blossom. But there's still hope. The days are getting shorter. Unless frost interferes first, I might still get some Heavenly Blues.

Friday morning.

The Flying Saucer side of the arch.

Each flower is unique.

The Fosters rented a skid-steer and it arrived on Friday morning. All day and into the evening, Sarah, Tosh, Miriam, and Kurt worked on chipping spruce branches. They hauled five loads in the dump truck to a farm down the road that wanted them. I took two loads and Kurt and I used them to mulch the blueberry rows in the big garden and along the edge of my pumpkin patch. The weather couldn't decide if it wanted to be sunny, cloudy, or rainy. It switched between them all day long, but we got a lot of work done in spite of that.

Working with the skid-steer.

Mulched blueberries in the big garden.

Mulched blueberries by my pumpkin patch.

Finally, Saturday was a day with no rain in the forecast. That morning, when I checked the morning glories, there were two solid blue flowers. They were still Flying Saucers, not Heavenly Blue, but I thought they looked pretty heavenly. 

Solid blue Flying Saucer morning glories.

The weather was perfect for working, and work we did. Next door at the Fosters' they continued chipping branches and hauling away logs.

I worked in my vegetable bed weeding the asparagus rows, tying celery for blanching, and weeding. I finally got around to tying up the grapevines. They were sprawling across the ground and needed support. I stretched wire between their posts and fastened them to them. During the day, we picked raspberries and zucchini. We snapped and froze green beans. Later in the afternoon I mowed. While I mow, I usually sing or just meditate, but this time I decided to test my memory by trying to recite poems. I have quite a few committed to memory. I did a good job with the smaller poems. The big test was The Walrus and the Carpenter. I memorized that poem back when I was 15 and infatuated with Alice. It has 108 lines. I recited it almost perfectly. When I came in the house later and checked, I only messed up one word. I said the young oysters came skipping through the frothy waves, when they actually came hopping. Pretty good after 53 years.

Celery tied for blanching.

Grapevines up on supports at last.

So, at the end of the day we had the tree branch chipping project done, the lawn mowed, the garden in order, and various other pre-Sabbath tasks completed. I love a busy Saturday. I love the feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day. After such a day, I feel ready and eager for the Sabbath.

The pile of branches gone.

Saturday night, after everything was quiet, I sat for a moment and thought back on my week-long journal editing project. I've gone as far as I can go for now. I only have my hand-written journals transcribed through 1985. Maybe over the winter I'll continue transcribing them and resume editing. I enjoyed revisiting 1975-1985, but in the end, the feeling that settled in my mind was the fragility of life, how quickly time passes, how short life is, and how much things change—people and places. I saw on the pages of my journals a world that has vanished, in many instances without a trace. Places that only exist now because I wrote them down. My intention in keeping a journal—written in the very first lines I penned back in 1975—was to preserve something I knew would inevitably be lost. I was a strange and moody teenager, and often an insecure and moody young adult, who, from an early age and even to today, has experienced what is called anticipatory nostalgia—a feeling of nostalgia for something while you're still living it. The pages of my old journals are full of people I miss—my grandparents, my father, my sister Mindy, other relatives, friends I lost touch with, and family scattered across the continent that I rarely see anymore. I don't mean to make this sound depressing. I enjoyed the journey back through time in a happy/sad way. I'm very good at feeling that way. I've been doing it for a long, long time.

So the Sabbath is here. It was chilly and foggy this morning when I went down to do the morning chores. The world was very quiet. The fog seemed to swallow all the sound. The only birds I heard were some crows far away talking to each other. Even the chickens seemed subdued. On my way back to the house, I took a quick walk through the meadow and around the garden and was soaked with dew to my knees. It felt like fall. Finally, around 8:30, the sun broke through. It looked so bright and lovely that I went out again to look at the garden.

Some of this morning's glories. I'm obsessed. Can you tell?

Sunflowers after the sun came out.

We are home from church. Our meetings were very good. Today is Fast Sunday and I'm looking forward to breaking my fast. We're having hamburgers, French fries, corn on the cob, and watermelon. Just writing that makes my stomach growl. I have plans for the week ahead. I have all the supplies I need to work on fortifying the barn against rats. That's my big project. They are delivering a stump grinder sometime during the week and we will grind down the two stumps in the front yard. And we'll continue harvesting. By this time next week, we should have a new grandchild. Rachel is scheduled to deliver her sixth child, our tenth grandchild, on Saturday. Lots to do, lots of changes. Time flies, life goes on.