I never complain about the heat here. We seldom get serious heat. Our average high temperature for July, according to the Weather Service’s records, is 78°. That’s hardly hot. When things do heat up, I welcome it. It makes it seem like real summer. I’ve lived in places where the temperature can hit the triple digit teens, so I know what extreme heat feels like. Last week it was in the high 80's and low 90's here. That’s hot for Potter County. And I didn’t complain. Many around here did. Because our summers are usually so mild, many homes don’t have air conditioning and many people really mind the heat. We don’t have air conditioning in our house. We just open windows and turn on fans. Our house sits in the shade of huge maples most of the day anyway. I revel in a heat wave because I know too well how things work at the other end of things. Our average low temperature in January and February is 16° and that’s just the average – it gets down below zero frequently. So I say bring on the heat. It will be gone too soon.
My garden didn’t mind the heat. We got some rain during the week so things are damp enough. I did resort to watering some things by hand on Thursday, but that was mostly out of an old habit leftover from all those years of gardening in Southern California. The plants didn’t really need it. The tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants loved the heat. I think they grew a foot in the last few days.
We had a rainbow on Tuesday morning just at dawn. I went out for my morning walk and looked up at the sky and there it was – a double bow stretching all the way across the western sky. I had to wake Stacey up (she doesn’t get up before sunrise if she can avoid it) to go out and look at it. It lingered for almost a half hour before it faded away.
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| The rainbow over the hay fields. |
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| The rainbow over my garden. |
My morning walks are a favorite part of my day. On Friday morning when the hot air was settling in, there was low fog all along the Genesee stream and over the beaver pond – the result of warm humid air meeting the cooler water and condensing. It was lovely to see. As I walked that morning, the air was full of swallows -- barn swallows, northern rough-winged swallows, and tree swallows – darting and cavorting in the air. I assume they were feeding on insects, which made their flight seem even lovelier.
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| Scenes from my morning walk. |
Out in the garden some of my favorite flowers are blooming – sweet peas, which won’t last long, yarrow, which should bloom until frost (I decided I need to plant more of it next year), and hollyhocks. I guess I should say hollyhock, singular, not plural, because there is only one. I have a hard time growing hollyhocks. They always become infected with rust, which is caused by the fungus, Puccinia malvacearum. It covers the leaves with ugly orange blisters. The leaves then shrivel and drop off. It happens every year. Nothing I’ve ever tried seems to help. Two years ago in a fit of disgust, I tore out all my hollyhocks and swore I’d never grow them again. But every year this one plant returns from a root deep in the ground. It grows to be over seven feet tall. Its flowers are a red so deep, they almost look black. If I’m lucky, the plant will put on good show before the rust overtakes it. This year, because it has been so damp, the rust has been especially bad. The plant is still beautiful – if you don’t look too closely. In another week or so, I’ll cut it down.
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| Sweet peas. |
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| Yarrow. |
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| Seven foot tall hollyhock. |
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| Rust infected leaves. |
Earlier in the spring, Stacey brought me some ranunculus tubers she found at work. They were in a drawer and had been there for several years. They were dried out and looked hopelessly dead. I soaked them in some water and they swelled up nicely, so I planted them. They are blooming right now and I love them. Next year I will plant more of them.
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| My ranunculus. |
The daylilies are blooming now too. I have a long bed of them along the road. They only bloom for a few weeks, but they are beautiful while they last. Mine are all shades of orange and yellow. There are other colors of daylily and some that even bloom perpetually all summer. I think I’ll get some of those to add to my collection.
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| Daylilies along the road. |
The balloon flowers are blooming now too. If I keep deadheading them, they will bloom until frost. I love their buds as much as I love their open flowers. I read once that the plants are edible, but I like looking at them too much to eat them.
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| My balloon flowers. |
My tall lilies are blooming. And I mean tall. They stand about seven feet. Their powerful fragrance perfumes the whole garden. The other lilies are all done now. And the poppies are almost done. My zinnias are suffering from Japanese beetle attacks and look like they will succumb soon, sadly.
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| My tall lilies. |
I harvested my garlic last week. It’s in the woodshed curing now. The harvest was good. We eat a lot of garlic and if they cure properly this batch should last us until next spring. Other than that, nothing else is ready to harvest yet. Onions will be ready in a few weeks. We could probably pull up some carrots now. We could start using some celery too.
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| Garlic curing in the woodshed. |
This was a busy weekend here. There were several events all taking place at the same time. Yesterday was the last day for the Hill Cumorah Pageant for this year. We didn’t even plan on attending that. There were too many other things to do closer to home. Yesterday was the Annual Great Balloon Rally up in Wellsville. Our branch always sets a booth at the Main Street Festival held in connection with the Rally. Stacey and I went up to be in our booth from 9:00 to 10:00. Our display was focused on family history. The library also had its annual book sale that morning, so I stopped in to see what was on the tables there. I bought a set of Nancy Drew mysteries, Nos. 1-12. My girls love those books. I also found two books that used to be in my aunts' library here that I remember reading while visiting here as a child. Beautiful Joe is about a dog and Wild Goose, Brother Goose is about a goose. I remember loving both of those books and I was glad to add them to our home library.
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| Our booth at the Main Street Festival. |
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| Main Street Wellsville. |
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| The library book sale. |
From Wellsville, we drove down to North Bingham to the big Benefit Auction the Amish hold every year for their schools. We went last year for the first time and had such a fun time we decided to go again this year. We didn’t buy anything. I’m too shy to be comfortable bidding against other people. Stacey loves doing that, but we didn’t see anything we wanted. It was fun just to walk around and look at the goings on.
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| At the auction. |
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| At the auction. |
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| At the auction. |
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| At the auction. |
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| At the auction. |
While we were in North Bingham we drove up to the cemetery. We hadn’t been up there in several years and I like to drop in to see how the dead ancestors are doing. It’s a very pretty cemetery set on top of a hill right on the state line. My Grandmother Howe’s people are buried there. I love driving the roads from Gold to North Bingham. The roadsides are lined with blue chicory and white Queen Anne’s lace right now. Chicory is one of my favorite wild flowers.
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| Chicory along the roadside. |
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| North Bingham Cemetery. |
From North Bingham we drove to Coudersport to see what was happening at the second Annual Eliot Ness Festival. Most people know who Eliot Ness was, how he helped bring down Al Capone, the Untouchables and all that, but most don’t know that later in his life, he bought a house in Coudersport and lived here until he died. To celebrate that illustrious connection to Potter County (we don’t have many) the Chamber of Commerce and County Commissioners created the Eliot Ness Festival. They have all sorts of activities – gun fight re-enactments, people dressed in period costumes wandering around town, a parade. Stacey and I went down in the afternoon to see the antique cars on display. There were 110 of them parked all along Main Street.
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| Main Street Coudersport at the Eliot Ness Festival. |
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| Antique cars at the Eliot Ness Festival. |
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| Stacey with the Rigas family's antique car. |
On our way home from Coudersport, as we were nearing home on the road between Raymond and Gold, we saw a bear up in the clear cut where the power lines go over the hill. It was there a long time. Think it was feeding on wild raspberries as there a lot of them growing under the power lines.
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| The bear. |
This morning I was awakened by distant thunder before dawn. I lay in the dark and listened as the storm grew closer. The house was still hot despite the windows being open all night. There was lightning and I counted, waiting for the thunder. I got to five before it roared. Then I heard the rain far off, hissing. Then I smelled the rain as it approached. Then it poured rain. When I went out before we left for church, the rain had stopped and the world was cooler and washed clean. What a lovely way to start the day. Now we’re home from church. We ate lunch with Julie next door. It’s very warm (84°) and sunny and after I do the chores and take a short Sabbath nap, I plan to go outside and stay outside. Maybe I’ll set up my hammock and read in the shade. Yes, that sounds good. Good Sabbath to you.
