If you were to ask me to name the best month of the year, I would not hesitate to answer June. Each month has its particular grace. Some months are blessed with brief bursts of unpredictable beauty like the leaves of October or the capricious eruption of spring flowers in April or May. July, August, and September boast heat and the delights of high summer vegetables, fruits, and flowers. Sometimes it is a holiday that redeems an otherwise bleak month like Christmas in December or Thanksgiving in November. Then there is February which is only bearable because of its brevity. But June is almost perfect in every aspect. It brings us the longest days, comfortable warmth, and the dazzling lushness of early summer. The trees at last are fully leafed out and cast their shade on the lawn. June’s flowers are luxuriant – voluptuous peonies, spectacular poppies, columbine, irises, larkspur and lilies in soft rainbow colors, and the ancient, fragrant pink rose that blooms under the linden tree only in June. In June the weeds and the bugs still behave themselves. Later, when the high summer heat comes they will run rampant. Even the sunrises and sunsets seem prettier in June. I try to be out to watch them come and go every day. In June, if ever, come perfect days.
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| Morning sky looking over the garden toward Shillig's house. |
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| A sunset last week. |
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| Looking over Gold at dawn. |
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| The beaver pond at dawn. |
We had good weather all week. Even the rainy days were good. We began planting out in the vegetable gardens. The tomatoes we’ve been tenderly caring for all these months are in the ground now. Kurt prepared a 130 foot long row weeks ago. He tilled it, set up soaker hoses, covered it with red plastic mulch, and set up support posts. I didn’t think we had enough tomatoes to fill a row that long, but we did. We even had a few left over to tuck into other parts of the garden. We also planted peppers, three dozen at the end of that long tomato row, and two dozen in my glass pepper box. So with tomatoes, peppers, and onions all in the ground and growing, we should have a good year for canning salsa and sauce. That’s if nature cooperates with some heat and sunshine and we can keep the deer, rabbits, and woodchucks away.
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| Getting ready to plant tomatoes. |
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| A long row of peppers and tomatoes. |
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| Peppers in the pepper box. |
We ate our first picking of spinach last week. This is only the second time I’ve grown spinach. I used to think I was not fond of it. We ate it a lot when I was a child. My mother always cooked it then buttered it and served it with a sliced hard-boiled egg on top. I used to choke it down. But my tastes have matured and I love it now. And I prefer it the way my mother made it. Over the winter, I read about a Japanese vegetable called komatsuna (Brassica rapa var. perviridis), a cross between mustard greens and pak choi, that many say is more delicious than spinach, so I decided to grow some this year. We ate a batch of that too. It was delicious, but different than spinach. I will continue to grow both every year from now on.
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| My spinach bed. |
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| My komatsuna. |
In the flower garden, right on cue on the first day of June, the first poppies and irises opened. The first peony opened today. The lupins and columbine are putting on a show. I’ve been slowly pulling out all the violas and forget-me-nots that are looking a bit rangy and replacing them with the annuals I’ve grown. I put in some zinnias, cleome, cosmos, and marigolds. They won’t be in full bloom until warmer July days come, but they will bloom for the rest of the summer after that.
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| One of the first poppies to open. |
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| Poppies. |
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| The first iris to open. |
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| The first peony to open. |
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| Lupins. |
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| Columbines. |
June is when the wild flowers hit their stride. Along the roadsides and in the meadows, the early spring flowers are gone. Even the dandelions have started to fade away. These are the days when the dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis, also called wild phlox, night-scented gilliflower, and many other things) makes the wild world beautiful and fragrant. I’ve never seen it bloom so abundantly or beautifully before. Although considered by many to be a weed, I let it grow in certain parts of my yard, along the wild edges and even in a few flowerbeds. Out on the lawns, the dandelions have been succeeded by hawkweed. We have two kinds here, yellow hawkweed (Hieracium caespitosum) and orange hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum). They are smaller than dandelions and grow on slender stems in great swaths across the lawn. Many consider them an invasive pest, but I like them. Last week when Kurt was mowing the big lawn, he mowed around the big patch of hawkweed blooming there. He thought it was too pretty to mow down. Soon there will be other flowers to brighten the roadsides, white and pink mallows, oxeye daisies, yellow mullein, and sky blue chicory.
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| Dame's rocket in my yard. |
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| Hawkweed in the lawn. |
We had lots of coming and going in the family last week. On Tuesday Miriam left to go down to the Thayn’s house to help out there for a few days. On Thursday evening, Kurt and Julie’s daughter Shay, her husband Dan, and their six children arrived at their house for a week’s visit. On Friday morning Hannah left to go to Utah to spend a week at Geoffrey and Joni’s house to help take care of their children while Joni is on a week’s vacation with her sisters. Then on Saturday morning Stacey and I drove down to the Thayn’s house for a quick visit. We got there at lunchtime and spent most of the day working in their yard weeding and putting down new mulch in the flowerbeds. Miriam and Stacey put up a trampoline sprinkler and the girls had fun cooling off in the heat of the day. The main reason for the visit was so that I could ordain Tabor to the office of high priest. He was the elder’s quorum president in his ward but now has been called to serve on his stake’s high council which required that he be a high priest and he asked me to do the ordination. I did the ordination during church today. So we were there most of the day yesterday and part of the day today. When we came home today, Miriam, came home too and we brought Hazel, June, Mabel, and Florence with us to spend the week here. This Friday, Tabor and Rachel will come here to spend the weekend, visit briefly with Shay and her family, and then take their girls back home with them when they leave on Sunday. Hannah will come home from Utah on Saturday, the same day Shay and her family return to Utah. That’s a lot of people going a lot of places in a week. It makes my head spin.
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| Fun on the trampoline with the sprinkler. |
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| Florence helping with the weeding. |
Because we were going to be gone for most of two days, I had to move the chicks to the barn. They had outgrown their box on the back porch and their little feeder and waterer anyway and needed to be moved into bigger quarters. I prepared the enclosed middle pen for them and gave them a bigger feeder and waterer. They will spend a month in there before I release them into the big flock. In other fowl news, our peahen has laid eggs and is sitting on them. I’m hoping they are fertile. We’ll see in about 28 days.
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| Chicks in their new pen in the barn. |
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| Our peahen Petunia on her nest. |
So we are back from the Thayn’s. We were only gone for about 35 hours, eight of which were spent in the car, but somehow it seems like we were gone longer. When we got back this evening, we went over to the Shillig’s for dinner and to sit on the back porch and for the first night of fireworks. That makes it seem like summer has really begun. It will be lively here with our granddaughters here all week. I hope we can keep them busy and entertained. We’ll see.
Dan
