The last week of June was rainy. It reminded me of tsuyu, the rainy season in Japan where for a month, every day, and sometimes all day, it rained. The word tsuyu means “plum tree rain” because in Japan the plums ripen during the rainy season – a nice way to put a poetic spin on a miserable month. I lived through two rainy seasons in Japan, the first in 1978 in the city of Takatsuki near Osaka, and then in 1979 in Akashi, a city on the shore of the Inland Sea. My journal entries from those days are full of complaints about the heat and the humidity and the endless rain. In spite of all that, we went out every day knocking on doors, trying to teach the Gospel to anyone who would listen. Because we rode bikes, we could only use umbrellas when we were on foot, so we would put on plastic rain suits (a hooded coat and pants) over our clothes and ride to whatever area we were tracting in. Then we would park our bikes, take off the rain suits, and open our umbrellas. Wearing those rain suits was a misery. It was already hot and humid and, wrapping ourselves in plastic, we were just as wet from sweating as we would have been from the rain. I learned to cope with the heat and the humidity – mostly. I kept a supply of chu chu, the Japanese version of Otter Pops, in the freezer in our apartment to cool me down. We only had electric fans in our apartment, but we found that if we draped a damp towel over them, the air they blew was a little cooler. And I learned to take a cold fud every night (fud is the missionary slang for ofuro, a Japanese bathtub) and to be liberal with the baby powder to alleviate the prickly heat rash that covered most of my body. My second rainy season in the city of Akashi, we lived in an old apartment on the north side of a building that got no sunshine and was always damp. During that rainy season, we had mold growing on almost everything – the walls, my books, our clothes, and we had mushrooms that sprouted from our tatami floor. Such happy memories. And I really mean that. Although I didn’t fully appreciate it then, the passing years and a bit of accumulated wisdom have made me see the value of those experiences and I look back at them now with genuine fondness.
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| Me with one of my companions, Elder Duersch, on a day when it wasn't raining. |
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| Chu chu. |
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| A fud in one of our apartments. |
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| Moldy walls and mushrooms growing from the tatatmi in Akashi. |
On Monday it rained in the early morning. After it stopped, I waited for the lawn to dry and, as soon as it did, I jumped on the mower and mowed as fast as I could. When I finished, I went out to help Kurt and Chase, who were working in the big garden. I did some weeding and edging on the vegetable rows. It rained again for about twenty minutes, but I kept on working. When I finished that, I helped with the tomatoes. Kurt and Chase were putting up the supports for the plants. As they worked and strung up the tomatoes, I followed and pinched out all the suckers. We’ve vowed to be better about pinching the tomatoes this year. Last year we were not vigilant and the plants turned into dense bushes that got blight and collapsed under their own weight. We’ve learned our lesson. We will pinch.
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| The tomato row with supports in place. |
Later that afternoon we had a thunderstorm – the perfect sort that comes to bring relief on a very warm summer day. I heard the first distant peal of thunder at 3:15 when I was down in the barn doing the afternoon chores. I was in the upper part of the barn filling the feeders. A moment later the rain began to patter on the barn’s metal roof. By the time I walked down and around to the lower part to collect the eggs, the rain was falling harder. The chickens, who had been enjoying the scratch I’d thrown to them out in their yard, came inside to get out of the rain. I gathered the eggs and then stood in the barn with the chickens watching the rain come down and listening to the thrumming of it on the roof. Chickens are good company on a rainy afternoon. They complain a bit at first about having to be indoors, but then they settle in, the friendlier ones around my feet, the others eyeing me from a distance. After a twenty minute visit, I decided to make a dash for the house. I got wet, but I didn’t mind it. The rain was warm and the air had that wet freshly cut lawn and far off mock orange smell. After I put the eggs away (31 of them that day and all but two of them clean enough to go straight into cartons), I went out on the front porch and sat in the rocking chair to enjoy the storm. It didn’t last long. By 4:30 the thunder, never nearby to begin with, had moved further away and the rain turned to drizzle and then stopped.
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| My mock orange bush. |
That evening we had dinner at the Shillig’s house – a Mexican fiesta. Great food and afterward we had family home evening and fireworks. Then the rain came back and the party was over.
Tuesday morning I had errands in town and as I was driving by one of the nurseries, I saw them hanging out a sign that said Buy One Get One Free. I couldn’t resist. Many nurseries are done for the season and those that are still open have plants that are mostly rootbound and shabby. This nursery’s plants looked pretty good. The long border is at the point where many spring flowers are fading and, as usual, I haven’t adequately prepared summer annuals to fill in the gaps they leave. So I bought four flats of flowers, one each of salvia, snapdragons, verbena, and gazanias. I planted them as soon as I got home. They were a little rootbound, but I teased out their roots as I planted them and they should grow great and fill the summer border with bright colors.
It looked like it would rain all morning and into the afternoon that day, but it held off until just before afternoon chore time – again. I walked to the barn and back in a warm rain. I didn’t complain. I remember all the days, weeks, and months that I walk to and from the barn in snow. A summer rain feels wonderful no matter how wet I get. And the rain was great for my newly planted flowers. That evening we had dinner at the Shillig’s – spaghetti and salad and garlic bread. Just as dinner was ending, it poured rain for about half an hour.
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| A sunrise last week. |
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| A sunrise last week. |
During the week, with all that rain, we saw three rainbows – one on Sunday, one on Monday, and one on Tuesday. All of them in the evening when the sun was low in the sky.
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| Last Sunday's rainbow. |
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| Monday's rainbow. |
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| Tuesday's rainbow. |
Wednesday we got the rain without a rainbow. It was cool and rainy for most of the day, but it was a good day. It was Kurt and Julie’s grandson, Chase and Jamie’s youngest son, Grant’s eighth birthday and his baptismal day. We gathered up at the chapel and held a baptismal service, just the family. It was very nice. Later that evening we went next door for Grant’s birthday dinner – macaroni and cheese, his special request. Miriam baked a birthday cake and made some ice cream.
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| Grant on his birthday and baptism day. |
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| At Grant's baptism. |
In the late afternoon that day, smoke from the fires burning in Canada moved in. It was like a dry fog that obscured the sun. During the night, real fog rolled in and, combined with the smoke, made a thick shroud. On Thursday morning when I went out on my morning walk, it was a cool 45°. I could hardly see across the orchard for the thickness of the smoke/fog. Coincidentally, I had just read an article a few days before on the History website about how —
“in 536 A.D., much of the world went dark for a full 18 months, as a mysterious fog rolled over Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia. The fog blocked the sun during the day, causing temperatures to drop, crops to fail and people to die. Now, researchers have discovered one of the main sources of that fog. The team reported in Antiquity that a volcanic eruption in Iceland in early 536 helped spread ash across the Northern Hemisphere, creating the fog. Like the 1815 Mount Tambora eruption—the deadliest volcanic eruption on record—this eruption was big enough to alter global climate patterns, causing years of famine. …The Byzantine historian Procopius wrote that “the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year.” … researchers examined tree rings in Ireland and found that something weird did happen around 536. Summers in Europe and Asia became 35̊ F to 37̊ F colder, with China even reporting summer snow. This Late Antique Little Ice Age, as it’s known, came about when volcanic ash blocked out the sun. “We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon,” wrote Cassiodorus, a Roman politician. He also wrote that the sun had a “bluish” color, the moon had lost its luster and the “seasons seem to be all jumbled up together.” …This period of cold and starvation caused economic stagnation in Europe that intensified in 541 when the first bubonic plague broke out. The plague killed between one-third and one-half of the population in the Byzantine Empire, or Eastern Roman Empire.”
Standing in the garden that morning with the sun shining palely through the smoke/fog I felt a bit of anxiety. We like to think that we are so advanced now that we can control things that are really beyond our ability and comprehension, but history and the planet itself bare witness to our hubris. By 10:00 the fog had vanished, but not the smoke. I went out to work in the garden anyway. The weeds don’t care if the air is bad. In fact, I think they like it. Around noon, a breeze came through and cleared most of the smoke away.
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| Smokey sky. |
We are at the point now where we are beginning to harvest more things from the garden. The week before last we had the first cutting of broccoli. Last week I cut the garlic scapes. We have been picking strawberries all week, not a lot of them, but a small and steady supply. We’ve been eating lettuce for a while now. All the things we planted recently from seed have sprouted – beans, squash, pumpkins, and cucumbers. The rain has been a great blessing. Now we just need some consistent warm sunny weather and it looks like things will go well – knock on wood.
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| Garlic scapes. |
On Thursday, the more adventurous part of the crew (that’s everyone except Stacey and Hannah, who were at work, and me, because I didn’t feel adventurous) went canoeing on the Allegheny River. They started in the town of Warren and traveled about seven miles down the river. It took them three hours. Miriam reported that the river was a little low, only a few feet deep for most of the way. They had a great time.
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| The canoe adventurers. |
Friday morning when I went for my walk, I couldn’t tell if it was just foggy or if the smoke had moved in again. I walked my usual route across the front yard, down to the barn, along the beaver pond, and back through the big garden and orchard. I found fresh evidence of deer depredation. They left telltale piles of dung where they’d stopped to nibble on the apple trees. Later in the morning, after the dew had dried, I went out to work in the big garden. It was definitely smoke in the air. I cut a bit more broccoli and the first heads of cauliflower.
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| Friday morning. |
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| Friday morning. |
We began a big project that day over on the property next door – The Tree House. Earlier in the week Kurt and Chase went to an Amish mill up in Yorks Corners and ordered some lumber. On Friday they picked it up. According to the plans, this will be no ordinary tree house. Construction would have begun that afternoon, but two things interfered. First, it was a hot day, and most everyone went swimming. Second, Chase and I went to get a load of straw. We drove up to Rhoda Lent’s farm up on Sweden Hill and while we were there ,we had a nice visit with Rhoda. Back when she had her dairy herd, we used to buy our milk from Rhoda. She only raises beef cattle now. Chase and Geoffrey once worked for Rhoda and her husband Roger one summer repairing fence lines. We bought ten bales of straw and brought them back and stacked them in the barn over by the big garden to be used later in the chicken coop and for mulch in the asparagus beds.
That evening we made dinner for everyone. Miriam and Stacey made bread pockets stuffed with a mixture of bacon and sauteed garden vegetables. We had a salad from our garden and homemade applesauce (canned in 2021 the last year we had an apple crop). Miriam made cookies for dessert. We ate over at Shillig’s on their back porch. That’s our preferred dining area during these nice summer days.
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| One of my favorite poppies last week. |
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| Another favorite poppy. |
Saturday morning was hazy again and it was definitely smoke, not fog. When I took my morning walk, I could smell the smoke. Last week in our daily reading of the Book of Mormon, Stacey and I read Mormon chapter 8 where Mormon has been slain in battle and his son Moroni takes over writing to finish his father’s record. Moroni prophetically speaks of a time in the last days when the work of the Lord will commence and prophecies will be fulfilled. Writing in around 400 A.D., Moroni gives a description of those times that seems very familiar, like reading today’s news:
“Yea, it shall come in a day when there shall be heard of fires, and tempests, and vapors of smoke in foreign lands; And there shall also be heard of wars, rumors of wars, and earthquakes in divers places. Yea, it shall come in a day when there shall be great pollutions upon the face of the earth; there shall be murders, and robbing, and lying, and deceivings, and whoredoms, and all manner of abominations; when there shall be many who will say, Do this, or do that, and it mattereth not, for the Lord will uphold such at the last day. But wo unto such, for they are in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity.” (Mormon 8:29-31)
All of those things abound on the earth these days, but the fires and vapors of smoke seemed especially significant as I looked out at our obscured landscape.
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| Water lilies in our lily pond. |
We did a lot of work on Saturday. I trimmed the edges of the garden and then mowed. As soon as I finished mowing, it started to rain. Perfect timing. While I was doing all that, Kurt, Chase, and his boys were working at cleaning out the well over at the farm house. The well is only about ten feet deep with about three feet of water in it. The bottom was full of a foot or more of silt. They removed as much water as they could and sent the boys down one at a time to take turns scooping out buckets of silt. After a while the rain got harder and everyone went indoors. Then it stopped and we went out again. Then it began again and we retreated once more. It stopped long enough in the afternoon for us to eat a late lunch. Hannah made pizza, Julie made a salad, Miriam made brownies. We ate on the Shillig’s back porch again. We sat after lunch and chatted a while. Around 5:30 the rain began again, a steady, hard rain. I called it quits for the day at that point. At least the rain washed the smoke from the air. The rain stopped long enough for someone up the road to launch fireworks from 10:00 to midnight. Then the rain returned. The sound of it pounding on the front porch roof woke me at 1:30.
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| Down in the well. |
This morning it was very foggy and wet from the night’s rain. I only took a short walk, down to the barn and back. Church was good. Today is Fast Sunday. It started to rain on our drive home and it is coming down hard right now. I hope it lets up for a bit so I can go do the chores. It looks like the rain is going to stay for the next few days. It’s the Gold version of tsuyu.
Have a great Independence Day! God bless America!
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