Soft Summer Days

I’ll take the week a day at time. With our company gone and the big celebration over, life settled back into its normal patterns. I took my morning walks. I did my morning and afternoon chores. I spent the day tending gardens. July behaved itself and gave us plenty of heat and some rain. Routine summer days are never mundane. I delight in them.

Soft summer sunrise.

Sunrise.

If I had to give a one word description of these summer mornings, I’d have to say “soft.” When I go out, the first thing I feel is the softness of the air. It is pleasantly warm and a little bit humid and it feels soft on my skin. The air is also fragrant with the soft scent of the Peacock Gladiolus (Gladiolus acidanthera), mignonette, and the lingering perfume of the night-blooming jasmine growing in pots on the back porch stairs. The grass as I walk out through the garden is soft with dew. The sunrises, at least the ones I saw last week, are colored with soft shades of pink and purple. There isn’t much that is soft about doing the morning chores. The pigs are too rowdy, dirty, and bristly to be soft. I suppose the chickens’ feathers are soft, but their personalities are not. Coming back from doing the chores, I like to take the long way round through the woodland garden so I can pass by the summer azalea in full bloom. Its sweet aroma is wonderfully soft. Once the sun is up, most of the softness burns away.

Tiny, fragrant mignonette.

Peacock glads.

Night-blooming Jasmine.

Summer azalea.

Raspberry season has begun so I spend time in the mornings in the several raspberry patches on the property. I go to the berry patches for two reasons. First to pick raspberries, of course. They are one of my favorite fruits. As I pick them, I probably eat as many as go into the bowl. When I finish picking, I bring them in and wash them and put them in the freezer. When I’ve accumulated enough of them, I will make jelly.

The other reason I venture among the raspberries isn’t as nice. Because our winter was rather mild, the Japanese beetles are worse this year than they’ve been in a long time. They have emerged in their thousands, maybe millions, and are devouring their favorite plants – zinnias, dahlias, roses, hollyhocks, and especially raspberries. So I make my daily morning offensive, armed with another bowl, this one full of soapy water, and I knock hundreds of them to their frothy deaths. But there are always more. Within an hour of my onslaught, I can’t even tell that I did anything. If ever I was tempted to abandon my organic principles and turn to some more drastic chemical killer, this is it. Their devastation is so great and their numbers so intimidatingly huge, I find myself fantasizing about crop dusting the garden with something toxic. But no.

Japanese beetles eating my roses.

And the raspberries.

Way back during planting time, we prepared a patch of ground for potatoes, but before we could plant them, thousands of poppy seeds sprouted there. They were volunteers, the result of discarding poppy seed pods in the compost last year. I thought about plowing them under, but couldn’t do it. Instead, we planted potatoes somewhere else and let the poppies grow. That poppy patch is beginning to bloom now and it is amazing.

The poppy patch.

Some of the different poppies.

The forecast on Wednesday said to expect thunderstorms. Sarah messaged us that morning and told us they had a big storm in Toledo, where she lives, on Tuesday night. Often times the weather she got is the weather we get hours later, so I waited for the storm to arrive. The morning was warm and muggy, but calm. About noon, the wind picked up and clouds began to roll in. I love a summer thunderstorm as long as it isn’t too violent. High wind, pelting rain, and especially hail, wreak havoc on the garden, especially the big leaved plants like pumpkins and corn. A few weeks ago a storm came through here and dropped hail on the hills to the west of us in Hebron Township. One of the farms over there that has an orchard reported they lost 80% of their apple crop to the hail. I felt very blessed that the hail missed us. At 2:00 the weather service issued a tornado watch. We don’t get tornadoes very often here, in fact, almost never, so I wasn’t really worried. The rain came shortly after that and fell hard for twenty minutes. Then the sun came out. I knew there was more storm on the way, so I hurried down to the barn to do the afternoon chores before it showed up. For once I made it.

Letting the chickens out in the morning.

I was hoping the storm, when it arrived, would bring the temperature and humidity down just a little. When it’s 89° with 89% humidity, it feels very steamy. Everything is damp. Nothing dries out. The rain returned at 4:30. I was out weeding and was already so soaked with sweat, I just kept on working. It was a warm rain. For a few minutes it poured very hard and I took shelter in the greenhouse, but as soon as it let up a little I resumed weeding. It reminded me of doing missionary work in Japan during tsuyu, the rainy season, when we were out in the rain all day, day after day, going door to door with very little success. Happy memories forty-six years later, but not so much then. And that was the end of Wednesday’s storm, just rain – no thunder or lightning. No hail or tornado, thankfully.

I decided last week that in the evenings, when the light is long and low, I would try to sit for a while each day in the rocking chair on the front porch and do nothing. It was hard at first. I had to resist the temptation to fuss with my cell phone. Then I decided not to have my phone or anything else with me, not even a book. It was just me and the rocker and the porch. It has become a favorite time of day for me and I look forward to it. I don’t really do nothing. I find that when I sit still like that, well, not really still because I do rock, I daydream and my mind is filled with thoughts and memories and plans. One evening last week as I was sitting there, I reflected on the fact that I live in a house where my grandparents once lived. It’s strange to think that a hundred years ago Nana and Papa Howe occupied these rooms, slept in them, ate in them, sat in them and talked. I never knew Papa, he died when I was two, and I never really heard Nana talk because of her Parkinson’s disease, so I like to think of them doing those things. Then I thought of my aunts who lived here for so long, Sarah, Esther, and Eleanor. I have happy memories of them, especially Esther and Eleanor, because I visited them here over many years and sat in these rooms and talked with them, ate at their table, spent hours sitting and reading their books. I like the feeling of connection it gives me to think I occupy the same spaces they once did. It makes me love living here even more.

My porch rocker.

On another hot evening as I sat and rocked, I found myself pondering on the cool things I crave on summer evenings. Most of them are things flavored with lemon – lemonade, lemon ices, and lemon custard ice cream. When I was a child, we went to Baskin Robbins every chance we got. I liked to try their different flavors, but I always got two scoops and the second scoop, when they had it, was always lemon custard. I haven’t been to a Baskin Robbins in over thirty years, and I don’t know if it’s the same as I remember it, but I think they still offer lemon custard ice cream sometimes. One of the other hot weather cravings I get is another ice cream flavor (my cravings seem to mostly involve ice cream) – mint chocolate chip, the perfect combination of cool mint, a bit of chocolate, and smooth, cold creaminess.

On yet another evening, I had an odd summer memory crop up. It came from the time when we lived on Bridge Street. In those days, on Fridays, after Grandma Rathfon got home from work, she, my mother, and most of us children went grocery shopping. We went to different markets for different things. We went to the West Shore Farmers’ Market in Lemoyne for fresh produce, fish, Lebanon bologna, and things like that. It was a magical place to me. The smell in its warm labyrinth of stalls was complex and thrilling. But we bought most of our groceries at the Weis Market in Camp Hill. This particular memory is of going to the freezers in that store, those long open top chest freezers where the rectangular cartons of ice cream were stacked three deep, and putting my head down into it and inhaling. There was a smell that I can’t describe exactly. Maybe it was a little sweet, but not distinctly anything, just frosty on my face and in my nostrils. I thought of that smell and I longed to find it again – a hot summer Friday afternoon with my mother and grandmother, all of us young, and a cold freezer on my face and breathing in that frosty fragrance, perhaps sweetened by the anticipation of a bowl of ice cream later in the evening – an innocent and happy time from a vanished age. A summer evening in a rocking chair on the porch is a magical time.

Thursday was a different day. The morning was cool and gray and rainy. I started out on my predawn walk and turned around and came back. I didn’t want to start the day damp. After morning scripture reading and family prayer, I finally went out. Everything was wet, so I didn’t do my usual ramble but went straight to the barn to feed the chickens. They were perturbed at me for being late. If you’ve never kept company with chickens, you don’t know how rude they can be at times. They are great complainers. The sun didn’t shine all day. It was warm, overcast, and drizzly all day. I only managed a few minutes of work outdoors between showers.

The big garden.

My summer reading is usually light. I’m busy all day and only really take time to read at bedtime and that only lasts a half an hour or so before I fall asleep, so I don’t embark on any deep or complicated literary adventures during the summer – no Dante or Dickens. Last week I needed a book and I chose E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View. I’d read it before many years ago and I love the movie version of it that was done in 1987. Reading it this time is turning out to be a wonderful experience. First of all, Forster is a great writer. His gift for characterization and his descriptions are beautifully worded. Secondly, the first chapters of the book, the part I’m still reading, are set in Florence, a place that I love, during the Edwardian Era of the early 1900s, a historical period I also love, a brief and graceful time before the World Wars tore the world apart. Having finally been to Florence in 2019, as Forster describes the places visited by Lucy Honeychurch, I can picture them. I’ve stood in the Piazza della Signoria where Lucy witnesses a murder and faints. I’ve sat on the steps of the Gallerie degli Uffizi where she comes out of her faint and finds herself in the arms of George Emerson. I’ve stood on the bank of the Arno where George throws Lucy’s bloodstained photographs into the river and begins to realize he has fallen in love. My whole experience in reading the book this time is different and delightful. And it makes me long to go back to Italy and to Florence to be in those places again.

The Piazza della Signoria.

Standing in the Galleria degli Uffizi.

The Arno and the Ponti Vecchio.

Friday morning was warm and foggy. My walk that morning seemed mysterious as everything a few yards away from me was shrouded in fog. The fog clung to all the spider webs and revealed their secret snares. The lawn and meadow grasses were strewn with the gossamer webs of the tunnel spiders. Stretched between tree branches, tall grass stems, and even telephone lines there were webs of other spiders, elegant and lovely traps. The sun was late in appearing, but as soon as it broke through, the day heated up.

Foggy morning walk.

Tunnel spider web on the lawn.

Tunnel spider webs in the meadow.

One of the things I love most about the summer garden is basil. I love growing it. I love touching it. I love eating it. We have about twenty basil plants growing in various parts of the garden. On Friday, I noticed that they needed pinching. You can’t let them bloom or they stop growing. So I pinched the basil and brought in a big bowl of it. I took off all the leaves and washed it, bagged it, and put it in the fridge. Yesterday Stacey made it into pesto and topped a pizza with it. It was delicious. The botanical name for basil (Ocimum basilicum) is from the Latin basilius, and the Greek basilikón phytón, which means “royal plant.” There is a perennial form of basil, Ocimum tenuiflorum, that is called holy basil and is revered by the Hindus.

Back years ago when I was obsessed with the art of the Pre-Raphaelite painters (I still love them), I discovered paintings by several of them titled Isabella and the Pot of Basil. The paintings depict a scene from the poem Isabella, or The Pot of Basil (1818) by John Keats that he adapted from a story in Boccaccio's Decameron. The poem tells the story of Isabella, a young woman from Florence, whose family intends to marry her to a man she does not love. Isabella is in love with Lorenzo, an employee of her family and an unsuitable match. When her brothers discover this, they murder Lorenzo and bury his body and tell Isabella he has run off. But Lorenzo’s ghost appears to Isabella in a dream and tells her he has been murdered. She exhumes the body and buries Lorenzo’s head in a pot of basil which she then tends obsessively, watering it with her tears. Her brothers discover what she has done and steal the pot and Isabella dies, pining away in anguish. Very romantic and dramatic. The Pre-Raphaelite painters loved to paint scenes based on Keats’ poems. William Holman Hunt, John William Waterhouse, John Everett Millais, and John White Alexander all painted poor Isabella and her gory pot. They are amazing paintings. See what something as simple as picking some basil can do to me? From basil to pesto, pizza, murder, unfulfilled love, and tragedy – my brain moves in tortuous paths sometimes. But the pizza was delicious.

Isabella and the Pot of Basil by William Holman Hunt.

Isabella and the Pot of Basil by John William Waterhouse.

Yesterday was a busy day. We did lots of work in the yard and garden. Stacey, Chase, his son Kurt, and I drove out to the Jones’s and got a pig trough. It is sturdier than the one I built. Then, through the afternoon Chase and a crew of other family members trimmed the big spruce trees on the far edge of the property and loaded all the trimmings on the burn pile. In a week or so, after it has dried out more, we will burn it all. I spent the most of the day working with the garlic. First, I pulled them up and set them to dry in the sun. Then later in the afternoon Stacey and I cleaned them up and set them in the farmhouse to cure. Next week we will freeze-dry most of it and turn it into garlic powder. The best bulbs I will save to plant in the fall for next year. Working with garlic is a very fragrant activity. Smelling it always makes me hungry.

Working on the garlic.

As we were finishing our work in the garden, my cell phone, which was in my pocket, rang. It was Miriam telling me that Donald Trump had been shot. Stacey and I hurried and finished our work and went inside to see what was happening. I don’t comment much on specific political things in this journal, but I will say, I felt shocked to watch that. The world is full of strife and turmoil. Much of the time I feel somewhat disconnected from it, but I am aware of it. Although I feel isolated and somewhat secure here in my distant rural community, I do pay attention to the condition of the world and of our nation. These are precarious times. I pray every day for our freedom, our peace, and our families to be protected and preserved. We ate dinner and watched the news for a while and then I went out to my rocking chair on the porch to enjoy the last light of the day and experience a little tranquility. The fading sunlight seemed delicate, the evening beauty fragile. The world can change so quickly and peace can be shattered in an instant. Even in this far off corner of the planet I feel the ripples.

This Sabbath morning was bright and calm. I did the morning chores and dressed for church. I looked at the news and saw the world still raging, but I didn’t look long. I wanted some Sabbath serenity. Church was good. We had a baptismal service afterward, something that doesn’t happen often enough here. Now we are home. Lunch will be ready soon. It is a lovely summer Sabbath day. After a meal and a short nap, I will be refreshed and ready for a new week.