The Final Days of Spring

Tabor giving the kids a ride on the mower.

On Monday morning our company left. Gathering their things and loading their cars made for a burst of chaotic activity. Then they departed and the house felt desolate. With the Kunkles and Thayns gone, Stacey and Hannah at work, and Miriam up in her corner of the house, I stood alone in the living room and looked around. It was like standing in the aftermath of a concert or festival with all the debris of the fun still there to remind me that it’s over. It made me feel sad. And it didn’t help that it was an overcast morning, gray and muggy.

Good-bye to the Kunkles.

I tried to cheer myself by taking a walk through the garden. It always helps to lift my spirits to see a bit of beauty and also make mental lists of things to do for that day and in the days ahead. But that morning as I walked about in the gray light, I saw so many disappointments. So many things that I’ve looked forward to that did not happen. Of all the late spring flowers, I love bearded irises the most. They are flamboyant and colorful and fragrant. I have four patches of them in the long border and a row of them along the front of the raspberry patch, perhaps a hundred plants in all. But this year because of repeated frosts, there is just one flower stem, a pale blue flower. Seeing it made me happy that one survived and sad for the ones that didn’t.

My only iris this year.

My second most beloved late spring flowers are peonies. I have a thirty foot long bed by the near edge of the orchard dedicated to them. By the middle of June it is usually full of huge, fragrant flowers. But this year the frosts nipped their buds. Many just fell off and the ones that didn’t never opened. Not a single peony blossom this year.

My flowerless row of peonies.

But as I continued my walk, I noted all the early summer flowers starting. There are hundreds of poppy buds starting to pop. And larkspur stems stretching up with the promise of bunny-headed blossoms. There are balloon flowers, nigella, phlox, gladiolus ,and dahlias all there waiting to delight me in the summer days ahead. And there is always hope, the gardener’s chief solace, that next year things will be better and the irises and peonies, having been denied their chance this year, will bloom with double the vigor.

As I finished my walk, it began to rain, which made me happy. I went in and started to put the house back in order. I found the inevitable items left behind, more reminders. I tidied until afternoon. The rain was substantial enough that I only went out again to do the chores. It was nice to hear it patterning on the porch roof all day. That was Monday.

It seems that Nature attempted to make up for all those dry weeks last week. It rained on Monday day and night, Tuesday night, Wednesday most of the day, Thursday night, and Friday all day. Sometimes it poured, sometimes it drizzled. I couldn’t complain about it, well maybe I could. In fact, I did a little. It’s not that I was ungrateful, we really needed it, but it prevented me from doing so many pressing tasks outdoors. It looks like we won’t have rain this week until maybe midweek.

The long border at twilight.

Tuesday was one of the almost dry days. The morning looked promising at dawn and I took a walk to enjoy the sunrise. I walked down to the beaver pond where I startled a green heron (Butorides virescens) that flew away, and two does that were drinking at the pond’s edge that ran across the fields and disappeared into the tall grass. When I walked back via the big garden, I could see the path those two does had taken through the corn patch, and when I went on through the orchard, I saw that they had been nibbling on the leaves of my new apple trees. As I walked on to the house, my brain was busy devising plans for deer deterrents. I wanted to get to work in the garden right away, but everything was very wet from the previous day’s rain so I waited until 9:00 to go out. I needed to plant and to weed which meant lots of kneeling and I don’t like soggy knees.

The beaver pond on Tuesday's walk.

Headed home at sunrise.

I had trays of flower starts that were getting rootbound in their pots that needed to go in the ground. I managed to plant them all that day and planting them in such wet soil was a blessing. It makes their transplanting adjustment easier. And I had weeds to pull. Hundreds of weeds. Thousands of weeds. The rain-soaked soil made them easier to pull, again a blessing. I didn’t finish weeding. I never finish weeding. It is the most constant aspect of gardening. Later in the day, Kurt and I finished preparing the squash/pumpkin patch out in the big garden. We raked out stones and then laid down weed barrier. When we were done, I planted seeds of three varieties of pumpkin, three varieties of squash, and my favorite zucchini, Costata Romanesca. I also planted cucumber seeds along the fence in the brassica patch where they will climb. Now all our vegetable planting is done.

The pumpkin and squash patch ready to plant.

Tuesday was Miriam’s birthday. The Shilligs came over for dinner to celebrate with us. Stacey made lasagna. Miriam made garlic focaccia and her own birthday treat. Instead of cake, she made a Paris–Brest. We had them when we were in France and they were our favorite pastry. A Paris-Brest is a crisp, baked ring of pâte à choux that's split in half horizontally and filled with hazelnut praline crème mousseline. Rather than the traditional style, Miriam made a tower of them, each layer a bit smaller to form a cone. We were impressed that she would even attempt it. She did a good job and it was delicious.

Miriam's Paris-Brest birthday treat.

Miriam's birthday.

On Wednesday (actually Tuesday night), the rain returned. With all my flower planting done and new seeds in the ground, it was perfect timing. Rainy mornings in June have a special charm. The air is mild and still and the rain falls straight down in soft drops through the tree leaves into puddles on the lawn. There is a sense of tranquility in it. I opened the front door to get the maximum effect of the rain on metal porch roof and put on a queue of Chopin and sat and read. The book I read was the third book in The Once and Future King, The Ill-Made Knight. It deals mostly with Lancelot, the stories of the Round Table, and the Quest for the Holy Grail. Somehow it was the perfect literary fit for a rainy late spring morning with Chopin playing in the background. I finished it and considered going on to the fourth book, A Candle in the Wind, but I went in a different direction and decided to read it later.

That morning I read that author Cormac McCarthy had died. He was 89. Oddly we had just been discussing him a few days earlier. I first encountered Cormac McCarthy when I watched All the Pretty Horses (2000). I liked the movie and then read the book, which was even better, of course. McCarthy has a unique style of writing that takes some getting used to. He uses very little punctuation and no quotation marks in his dialog. But once I got the hang of it, I really enjoyed the book. When his book The Road was published in 2006 and won the Pulitzer Prize, I read that too. I’ve never seen the movie version of it. That was the extent of my exposure to McCarthy’s books in print or on film, so I decided to explore them. I read up on the different titles and decided to tackle reading Blood Meridian (1985), considered by many to be his magnum opus.

I ran errands later that morning in Wellsville. I did a trash run. I bought chicken feed. I usually buy my feed at the Tractor Supply, but there is a new store there, Runnings, that I’ve been buying at lately. It is a huge store (where the K-Mart used to be) and has so much great stuff. I’m not a shopper. At any other store, I usually go in, get what I need, and get out as fast I can, but I like to walk around in Runnings before I make my purchases just to see what they have. I check out the chicks and the seed racks and the garden supply aisles. And their feed is less expensive. While I was in town, I stopped at the library to see if I could check out Blood Meridian, but it was not available. I put a copy on hold and instead checked out No Country for Old Men.

Thursday morning was another lovely morning. The sky before dawn was full of misty clouds that glowed pink as the sun approached. Everything was wet from the previous day’s rain. I took a walk and made a slow circuit around the property, checking the flowerbeds, inspecting fruit trees, listening to the birds. These are poppy days and every morning I check them to see what new colors have opened to dazzle us. These are the common poppies (Papaver rhoeas), although they are far from common. As I stood out in the big garden and looked toward the beaver pond, I saw those two does again standing in the tall grass beyond, alertly watching me. I waved my arms and they leaped away and vanished. They are beautiful creatures. I wish they would stay on their side of the road and leave the gardens and orchard alone.

My favorite poppy this morning.

So many colors of poppy this morning.

The summer solstice arrives this Wednesday at 10:58 a.m. EST. The summer solstice takes place at the exact moment the sun reaches its highest point in the sky, which is when the northern hemisphere is tilted most towards the sun. It is the longest day of the year and the astronomical first day of summer. Around the world on or around the solstice, people celebrate in different and sometimes ancient ways with festivals and traditional activities. Northern countries like Sweden with its Midsommar, Finland with its Juhannus, and Latvia with its Jani Festival, celebrate the midnight sun by wearing floral wreaths, lighting bonfires, and traditional singing and dancing. At Stonehenge in England, on the summer solstice, the sun rises behind the Heel Stone and its first rays shine into the heart of the ancient stones. Thousands of people (many of them proclaimed Druids, pagans, and witches) gather to watch the sunrise there. I keep my own solstice observance. I go out to watch the sunrise, but my feelings are not entirely celebratory as I see the sun come up. I love summer and welcome it with joy, but I also feel sadness that, as the solstice passes, the days immediately begin to grow shorter again. The seeds of winter will be sown at 10:59 a.m. Another tradition that I’ve kept sporadically since my teenage years is that I read Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine during the first days of summer. I love that book. I will read it this week before launching into Cormac McCarthy.

A good explanation of the summer solstice.

Summer solstice sunrise at Stonehenge.

Friday was another rainy day. The sky was ominous all morning, a sheet of dark gray clouds from horizon to horizon. Expecting it to rain at any moment, I didn’t go on my walk. The rain came at 10:00 and poured down in sheets for ten minutes and then settled into a steady rain for the rest of the day. Miriam and I ran an errand to Olean, New York. On our way back, we passed a nursery and couldn’t help stopping to see what was still available. Most nurseries are finishing up as planting time is drawing to a close. We bought two flats of flowers, one of impatiens, and one of marigolds. When we got home there was a lull in the rain and I planted the impatiens around the maple tree in the front yard near the porch. The marigolds went in the new bed I made at the head of the driveway. I think I’m done planting flowers now, but you never know.

A field of daisies down the road from us.

Saturday was a beautiful late spring day. From sunrise to sunset, it was a lovely day. It was sunny and breezy and bright – the sort of day that comes after a day of rain. It was cool in the morning, perfect weeding weather, and that’s what I did all day. It warmed in the afternoon to 75° and I kept on weeding. My goal was to weed the asparagus beds. I started with the oldest bed in my vegetable garden. It was very weedy and it took me three hours to get it all cleaned up. From there I moved to the two smaller beds out in the big garden. One of them, the two year old bed, I had weeded recently and it was a quick and easy job. The other bed, the one we planted last year, was a disaster. The weeds were so thick I could barely find the little asparagus shoots. It took me the rest of the day to clean it out and edge it. Kurt came with his tractor at the end and hauled away the big piles of weeds and turf. At the close of the day I took a walk to look over my day’s work and it all looked good.

One of the paths through the orchard.

Things have grown livelier again with company. Our niece Kailie and her husband Ian arrived in the afternoon to spend the weekend with us. They are leaving tomorrow. Midweek the Shilligs have company arriving, their son Chase and his family and their daughter Kale and her children.

Today is another beautiful day. I woke up with the old Primary song “Sweet Sabbath day, all hail to thee, beautiful day of rest” playing in my head. I took my morning walk and the world was very dewy and Sabbath quiet. The only sounds I heard were the birds – one of which was the peacock and he is actually pretty loud. When he cries (sings?) in the mornings, it makes things sound tropical and exotic. That’s about as tropical as things get here.

Posey usually greets me at his favorite morning perch.

Today is Fathers Day, the first in my life without my father, which seems strange to me. Our church meetings were not particularly oriented to Fathers Day. In most congregations, the children will sing to their fathers, but we don’t have any children in our branch. Miriam made cookies and handed out bags of them to the fathers. That’s all we did. I will hear from my children and grandchildren at some point during the day. So, we are home from church now and lunch preparations are underway. I considered taking a nap after lunch, but the day is so nice, it seems a shame to sleep away any part of it. I already have projects and plans swarming around in my head for the week ahead as we officially welcome summer.