August is almost over. I know that time moves at a constant rate, but it sure seems to go faster as soon as summer comes. And fall goes even faster. And the weeks approaching Thanksgiving and Christmas roar by. Then, winter slows to a crawl until things start to warm up again. And yet, in reality, time moves at a constant rate – at least until you approach the speed of light (according to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, but that’s too complicated to ponder).
Monday was a busy day. We decided to tackle cleaning the barn – finally. The last time it was thoroughly cleaned was last fall. There was quite an accumulation of manure under the perches. We set up a three man operation. Daniel shoveled the straw and manure into buckets. I loaded the buckets into the wagon and hauled them up to the garden. Miriam unloaded and dumped the buckets – first into the new raised bed and then, when it was full, into the compost. Then Daniel scattered bales of fresh straw in the coop and cleaned out the nesting boxes. It took us several hours and by the time we were done, we were sweaty and stinky.
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| Watching the eclipse. |
Monday was also the day of The Eclipse. Here in Potter County we didn’t see the full 100%. We were at 80% and even that was pretty impressive. We used cardboard boxes to view it. At the peak of the eclipse, the light got dim and eerie and all the shadows were crescent shaped. Down in Gallatin, Tennessee, where the Thayns live, they had 100% and Rachel said it was amazing. In 2024 there will be another full eclipse and this time the 100% path will pass through Western New York. We’re planning for all the children and their families to come here for it. Who knows how many of them there will be by then.
On Wednesday, Daniel and I spent most of the day building my new hot box. The hot box is what my grandiose idea for a greenhouse finally evolved into after we realized we had overestimated the materials and our abilities with the original greenhouse plan. The hot box turned out great. I can’t wait to use it next year. I plan on growing beautiful peppers in it.
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| The finished hot box. |
Down at the barn, things have gone a bit strange. You will remember that we had a series of raccoon attacks that left seven hens and one raccoon dead. Well, because of those attacks, our alpha rooster, Copernicus, has a bad case of PTSD. He has lost weight. He won’t leave the coop. He stays inside all day and if you approach him, he runs and cowers in a corner. And on top of all that, he looks ridiculous because when he last molted, his tail feathers never grew back. He’s not our only rooster. We have Pedro, a beautiful little rooster who has been with us for years as the second-in-command, and Lola’s Child, who has turned out to be a pretty big rooster with a strange crest, half comb and half feather Mohawk, and we have a little black and white Polish Crested rooster (I’ve started calling Lech after Lech Walesa, the famous leader of the Polish Solidarity movement) who came as a surprise bonus chick in this year’s chick order. These three, who until now have been subordinate to Copernicus, are now vying for control of the flock. Pedro is used to being number two and isn’t pressing the issue, but the other two are in active competition for the title. It looks to me like the little black and white Polish will win. He’s pretty feisty. Meanwhile, pitiful Copernicus has turned chicken and I don’t know what will become of him.
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| Poor Copernicus. |
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| Beautiful Pedro. |
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| Lola's Child. |
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| Feisty Lech. |
I encourage milkweed to grow down around the barn and all summer long I check it regularly for monarch butterfly caterpillars. I haven’t seen any in several years, but this year they have come back. We’ve found five or six of them ranging in size from 1/4 inch to three inches. They are fascinating to me. It seems rather late in the year for them to be so small, but I’m glad they have returned. I hope we get to watch them metamorphose into butterflies.
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| One of our monarch caterpillars. |
School started on Thursday. I have not been called in yet – I seldom am called in so early in the school year. I can hardly believe it’s time for that. But then, the weather has turned cool, even chilly in the mornings. And right on cue I see the first intimations of autumn. Some of the trees are starting to change color. And the dominant wild flowers now are asters and goldenrod and it will be that way until hard frost comes. Hard frost. Just saying the words makes me shiver and feel sad. I’m not ready to say good-bye to summer.
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| Asters. |
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| Goldenrod in the meadow. |
I have several big cabbages ready in the garden, so on Saturday I picked one and started a batch of sauerkraut. I did the slicing and Daniel did the salting and packing. It will be ready to eat in about six weeks. I love sauerkraut.
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| A fifteen pound cabbage. |
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| Making sauerkraut. |
We won’t get much in the way of apples this year. Most of my trees bear a heavy crop every other year and this is their off year. A few trees have nice fruit on them. And the pear trees have some nice looking pears that will ripen later in September. My grape vines are loaded with fruit. I hope the weather stays warm enough for them to ripen. My tomatoes have come down with late blight. They are loaded with green fruit. We’ve been picking a few ripe tomatoes every day, but now it will be a race to see how much of it will ripen before the vines shrivel up and die.
The flower gardens are looking late-summer sparse, but there are still patches of beauty. The dahlias, marigolds, and zinnias are at their best now. They are big and bold and bright, just what late summer flowers should be. The gladiolus are just about done, which makes me sad. I grow them separate from the other flowers because I grow them to be cut for bouquets in the house. Summer wouldn’t be summer if we didn’t have big bouquets of glads in the house.
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| Dahlias. |
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| A bright spot in the flower bed. |
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| Purple zinnia. |
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| A patch of marigolds. |
This morning when I went down to the barn to let the chickens out, it was 36°. There was a low mist hanging over the beaver pond. The early sunlight was beautiful, but the air was cold. Driving to and from church we noted trees on the hillsides that are starting to turn. We are fast approaching fall, that breathtaking and fleeting season I love yet loathe to see it come.
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| A bouquet of glads. |
