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 his 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.
Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,
Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,
Sweet-William with his 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.
(Matthew Arnold)
It’s June, my favorite month! This is the month with the longest daylight hours of the year. The summer solstice will arrive on the 21st. In June dawn’s first light starts to brighten the sky around 4:30 a.m. and the evening twilight lingers until almost 10:00 p.m. In June my gardens are at their best as the high Midsummer pomps come on. The things I’ve planted are vigorously growing and the things I didn’t plant, the weeds, haven’t gone too berserk yet. June is a mild month – not as hot as July and August, with just the right amount of warmth and humidity. In June I will do my first thinning of apples. I will pick the first lettuces. There will be ripe strawberries. We saw our first fireflies last night. June is beautiful.
With perfect timing my flower beds welcomed June with irises, lupines, and the first roses and poppies of summer. In the woodland garden, the bluebells, wild phlox, and the pink woodland azalea burst into bloom. The lilacs are starting to fade now, which is sad, but soon there will be roses and a host of other bright flowers to make me happy.
It’s June, my favorite month! This is the month with the longest daylight hours of the year. The summer solstice will arrive on the 21st. In June dawn’s first light starts to brighten the sky around 4:30 a.m. and the evening twilight lingers until almost 10:00 p.m. In June my gardens are at their best as the high Midsummer pomps come on. The things I’ve planted are vigorously growing and the things I didn’t plant, the weeds, haven’t gone too berserk yet. June is a mild month – not as hot as July and August, with just the right amount of warmth and humidity. In June I will do my first thinning of apples. I will pick the first lettuces. There will be ripe strawberries. We saw our first fireflies last night. June is beautiful.
With perfect timing my flower beds welcomed June with irises, lupines, and the first roses and poppies of summer. In the woodland garden, the bluebells, wild phlox, and the pink woodland azalea burst into bloom. The lilacs are starting to fade now, which is sad, but soon there will be roses and a host of other bright flowers to make me happy.
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| Some of my irises. |
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| Lupines. |
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| The first rose of summer. |
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| The first poppy of summer. |
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| My pink woodland azalea. |
Out in the orchard where I let the grass grow tall, the dandelions have gone to seed. On a breezy day the air is filled with floating dandelion seeds. Some people might cringe at the sight – all those seeds swirling, settling, and sprouting into pesky weeds – but I like dandelions. My lawn is full of them (although I do not let them live in my flower beds). Now that their petals have fallen, the fruit trees are not as spectacular as they were in May, but there are tiny apples and pears swelling out there and that is almost as pretty a sight to me. It looks like we’ll have a great harvest of apples this year – the first bumper crop since 2011, unless there is some unforeseen disaster – a hail storm, meteor strike, tornado, plague of locusts.
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| The orchard. |
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| Loads of dandelions gone to seed. |
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| Little green apples. |
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| Tiny pears. |
The orchard looks great. I wish I could say the same for my grapevines. They died during the winter. I waited and waited for them to come out of dormancy. They usually break bud too early and get frosted, but they never broke bud at all this spring. After waiting so long, I finally did a thorough examination of them last week and found them dead, dry, and brittle – all three vines. I don’t know what happened. They are twelve year old vines, but grapevines can live for a hundred years. It’s too late to replace them this year. If I do replace them next spring I’ll find a different place to plant them. On Wednesday I cut the vines down and planted morning glories to fill the gap. I planted kiwi vines two years ago and one of them is blooming for the first time. Unfortunately, kiwis are dioecious, there are male and female vines, and the female vine is blooming, but the male isn’t so it can’t be pollinated and produce fruit. They need to get their act together. The flowers are pretty and have a lovely fragrance.
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| Fragrant kiwi blossoms. |
Last year I planted a patch of stinging nettles along the side of the woodshed. That might sound strange. Who would plant stinging nettles on purpose? Well, I make a liquid fertilizer every year by cutting comfrey, which grows in abundance all over my property, and rotting it in buckets of water. I read that adding stinging nettle to the rot water makes the mixture even more powerful. So I sowed nettles. They are growing beautifully and are actually a very pretty plant. I started my first buckets of rot water last week. Cutting the comfrey was no problem, but I found out quickly that I had to be careful around the nettles. I wore gloves, but my arm above the glove brushed a nettle. The stinging lasted only a few minutes, but I learned my lesson. Oddly, nettles are edible and very nutritious. When cooked, all the sting goes away. I haven’t eaten any yet. I’ll let you know when I do.
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| My stinging nettle patch. |
On Thursday I went to visit my friends Bob and Nancy Jones over in Genesee. Nancy has wonderful flower gardens filled with all sorts of annual and perennial plants. Several times she has stopped by to bring me plants that she thinned from her gardens. She told me to come with a shovel and take some more plants, so on Thursday I did. We spent several hours digging and bagging plants that I brought home and added to my flower beds – coneflowers, Canterbury bells, columbines, lilies, jonquils, and more. I hope someday my gardens will be as beautiful as hers. The Jones’s also have a huge vegetable garden. They have a vegetable stand on the road by their house where they sell their produce. Bob starts hundreds of plants in his sheds and is planting them out now. They shared some of those with me too – tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers. They are very generous.
School let out for the summer last week. The last day was Wednesday, but I was not there that day. I finished on Tuesday. I still get a little giddy when summer vacation begins. As a child, it was the beginning of months of relaxation and freedom. I have happy memories of the summers of my childhood – riding bikes, going swimming, playing long games of Monopoly, reading books, lazing away hot days. It isn’t quite like that now. There isn’t much lazing going on here. I have lots of work to do, sign orders to fill, gardens to tend, a long list of projects to do. But knowing the phone won’t ring in the morning to call me away to school makes me feel a little bit free. Of course, not having the income from being in school makes things interesting at times.
I finished my big 8' x 8' barn quilt that I’ve been working on for several weeks. Yesterday morning Stacey and I assembled it and the customers came by and picked it up. Those big barn quilts are a bit tricky. I have to use two full sheets of MDO board and paint them separately. I have to measure carefully so the pattern matches correctly when the two sides are put together. My work room isn’t big enough to put them together, so it’s always a tense moment when we bring them down and assemble them. I’m always relieved when the pattern matches. I have other smaller orders to work on now.
School let out for the summer last week. The last day was Wednesday, but I was not there that day. I finished on Tuesday. I still get a little giddy when summer vacation begins. As a child, it was the beginning of months of relaxation and freedom. I have happy memories of the summers of my childhood – riding bikes, going swimming, playing long games of Monopoly, reading books, lazing away hot days. It isn’t quite like that now. There isn’t much lazing going on here. I have lots of work to do, sign orders to fill, gardens to tend, a long list of projects to do. But knowing the phone won’t ring in the morning to call me away to school makes me feel a little bit free. Of course, not having the income from being in school makes things interesting at times.
I finished my big 8' x 8' barn quilt that I’ve been working on for several weeks. Yesterday morning Stacey and I assembled it and the customers came by and picked it up. Those big barn quilts are a bit tricky. I have to use two full sheets of MDO board and paint them separately. I have to measure carefully so the pattern matches correctly when the two sides are put together. My work room isn’t big enough to put them together, so it’s always a tense moment when we bring them down and assemble them. I’m always relieved when the pattern matches. I have other smaller orders to work on now.
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| Clockwise from the top left: the two halves finished. Putting it together. The assembled barn quit. The customer picking it up. |
Yesterday was a busy day. The weather was cool and lovely. I spent the day working outdoors. I made wire cages for some of my tomatoes. I did some light weeding. I made the first fire of the year out in the fire pit. I burned the Christmas tree, the old picket fence, and a pile of branches. It’s amazing how fire can reduce a huge heap of stuff into a little pile of ashes. I also cleaned the back porch. My garden is planted, so I cleared away all the seed trays, spilled dirt, and pots that were on the porch. It’s nice and tidy now. Next on the list is cleaning the woodshed. I’ll tackle that tomorrow.
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| The first fire. |
This weekend was Stake Conference. The stake broadcasted last night’s session so we went up to our building and watched it. It was very good. They used to broadcast all the sessions, but the stake has decided not to broadcast the Sunday session anymore. That’s sad because the Stake Center is a two and half hour drive one way for us. We budget one trip to Palmyra per month to go to the temple. Others in our branch also can’t go for various reasons, age, health, finances, etc. So we are not going to Stake Conference today. It feels strange not to go to church. It will throw my whole week off. We will do what we can to keep the day in our home. I have sacred music playing. We will watch some church videos. But still.
The week ahead looks like it will be cooler and rainy at first. I will work on some indoor projects while it’s wet outside. I have an order to paint. There’s the woodshed to clean. After that, I hope to paint the dining room. Those projects should fill up the wet part of week. Then when things dry out, I will be out doing what this month is best for – gardening, enjoying the sunshine, the flowers, the beauty of June.
The week ahead looks like it will be cooler and rainy at first. I will work on some indoor projects while it’s wet outside. I have an order to paint. There’s the woodshed to clean. After that, I hope to paint the dining room. Those projects should fill up the wet part of week. Then when things dry out, I will be out doing what this month is best for – gardening, enjoying the sunshine, the flowers, the beauty of June.
