The First Week of Summer

I decided to take the week a day a time for this Journal. I wrote about the day, on the day, at the end of the day, recapping it while it was still fresh in my mind.

Monday_________________________________________

Today was one of those disappointing days that I find hard to cope with. I knew what was coming – rain. Rain is good. We needed it. The garden wanted it. But waking up to rain this morning was hard on me. It was chilly. It was too dark. Too gray. Too dismal. I didn't go out on my usual morning walk. Miriam was gone for the day. After Stacey and Hannah left for work, I was all alone in the house with nothing to do but brood on all the things I wanted to do but couldn't. I had to find something to lift my spirits. My first tactic was to reflect on upcoming events. Anticipation can be a powerful mood lifter.

We have some exciting days ahead. All of our children and grandchildren will be here at the same time in July. We'll all be together for a few days, too few, and it will be wonderful. Thinking on that brightened the gloom, but it seemed too far away. I needed something more immediate. I turned to music.

I wasn't sure what kind of music I needed. I tried classical first. That usually does the trick, but not this morning. Big Band, Rock and Roll, Ragtime, Klezmer. I spent an hour restlessly searching through my music files. Finally, I went to movie soundtracks. I don't know why, but that was what finally registered. Maybe it's because the music also has visual associations attached to it, scenes from the movies they accompanied. I set up a long queue, in alphabetical order, of movie themes starting with A Beautiful Mind and ending with Zathura: A Space Adventure. It was fun listening to them. I turned the volume up so I could hear it all over the house. As each theme started, I tried to name the movie it belonged to. If I didn't know, I stopped and ran into my room to check what it was. It was like a game. It kept my brain busy. I didn't go and stare out the window at the rain even once the entire morning.

When chore time arrived, it was still raining. I found myself wondering why we don't have a supply of umbrellas in the house. I got soaked going to the barn and back. The chickens were grouchy as only chickens can be on a wet day when they're cramped in close quarters. They were like bored children with no imagination stuck in indoor recess all day. All they could think to do was bicker and squabble with each other. They can be pretty human sometimes.

It rained all day except for ten minutes around 4:00. I went out as soon as it stopped and did some deadheading. I have to keep on top of that for flowers like poppies and cornflowers so they don't go to seed right away and stop blooming. The rain returned and continued on into the night.

Tuesday__________________________________________

Another gloomy morning, but at least it stopped raining. I took a walk later in the morning. I walked through the garden noting the good and the bad the rain had caused. Most things looked refreshed. Some of the top-heavy flowers like poppies, peonies, and delphiniums, had fallen over. Later in the morning I spent some time trying to prop them up, but many had collapsed and were beyond repair and had to be cut.

Poppies collapsed from the rain.

Delphiniums propped up with bamboo canes.

A Golden Tortoise Beetle (Charidotella sexpunctata) that I found in the garden.

In the afternoon, the sun broke through and the gloom vanished and it turned into a lovely early summer day. I worked in my vegetable garden and then the flowerbeds. The sun felt so good. I had some substantial weed piles by the end of day. When Hannah got home, she picked them up and hauled them to the compost pile for me.

The sunset was beautiful tonight. I took a long walk to watch its progress as it went from pastels to intense colors and then faded into twilight.

Sunset over the beaver pond.

It went from this –

– to this in just a few minutes.

Wednesday_______________________________________

A bright morning at last. I took a long walk around the property and noted the things I needed to do during the day. The lawn needed to be mowed again. I needed to spray the squash and melon vines. The Striped Cucumber Beetles were taking a toll on them. I needed to spray the tomatoes out in the big garden for aphids. I noticed that robins had been robbing the strawberry rows, but there wasn't much I could do about that. We have quite a few rabbits this year and they've been raiding the garden. I needed to set some live traps. Twice as I walked through the garden, a big vole skittered away from me. I needed to set some traps for them too, but not live traps. I don't relocate voles. Sometimes gardening feels more like a battle against nature than peaceful coexistence. Traps and tents, nets and sprays, and pulling up weeds – it can seem harsh. But if I want food and flowers, that's often what it takes. I try to find the most natural and harmonious solutions to my pest problems, but occasionally brutal measures are required.

Every morning now, I go out to see what poppies have opened. My poppies self-seed and cross pollinate each other, so I never know from year to year what colors will emerge. Some of them turn out to be quite beautiful.

A selection of Wednesday morning's poppies.

The dew dried by 10:00 and I was going to mow, but Miriam wanted to go to the gym (yes, I'm still going, but mostly for the steam room). When we got back from that, I mowed. June is Mow-Twice-A-Week season. If you don't keep up with it, you end up needing a hay mower to cut it. I like to mow. And I like the lushness of the lawn in June. It won't be like this in July and August.

Two weeks ago, Miriam planted a little garden out by her beehives and it was immediately eaten by something. I found out who the culprit was when I went to get the mower out of the pavilion. A woodchuck has taken up residence in the pavilion. It has a burrow under the work table, beneath a pile of wood stored there. The beehives are just on the other side of the pavilion wall. It was probably very pleased that Miriam planted such a delicious garden so convenient to its home. I set a live trap and baited it with a head of lettuce.

The pea trellis that we ordered several weeks ago finally arrived in the afternoon. I was getting worried. It was taking so long to get here and the peas were getting big enough that they needed support. When Hannah got home from work, she and I put in the posts, stretched the trellis netting and secured it, and then intertwined the pea vines. It looks good.

The new pea trellis.

Thursday__________________________________________

Another gloomy morning. It wasn't raining – yet, but I could sense that it was coming. I went out first thing and checked my live trap. No woodchuck. I came back to the garden and did my morning poppy patrol.

Some poppies on Thursday morning.

I did a bit of weeding just to feel like I'd accomplished something for the day. The rain came in the afternoon. It was a soft rain and it didn't last long. It was good for the garden, but not for working. Miriam and Hannah left this afternoon to go down to the Thayns for the weekend. They won't be home until Sunday night. So Stacey and I are the only ones home. We spent a quiet evening reading.

Friday_____________________________________________

Gloomy and gray all morning. The trap was still empty. After inspecting the garden, I decided the best way to spend the morning was to run errands. I needed to do a trash run and pick up some things at the hardware store. Because Miriam and Hannah have one car with them downstate, and Stacey had the other car at work, I was going to use the truck next door, but it wouldn't start. The battery was dead. So that killed those plans. I had to wait for Stacey to come home and then we would go on errands together. So now I was faced with finding something else to do until then.

These made the gloomy morning feel brighter.

With company coming, there were things in the house that needed to be readied. Repairs are already underway in the upstairs bathroom, but they will not be done before people arrive. So I tried to make the room as functional as I could. We've torn up the floor tiles, so I laid a sheet of plastic down and taped it to make a somewhat waterproof barrier around the bathtub. There was a lot of stuff that had been displaced, bottles of shampoo and conditioner and other things. I tried to tidy and organize them.

By late morning, the sky had cleared and it turned out to be a very pretty day. Sarah came by. She'd been in town and the nursery was having a buy-one-get-one-free sale on vegetable starts. She couldn't resist. She bought some peppers and cucumbers. We planted them. Then we did an inspection of the big garden. The cucumber beetles seem relentless this year. I've already sprayed for them twice, but we still found a lot. So I dusted all the cucumbers, squash, melons, and pumpkins with diatomaceous earth.

The dusted curcurbit patch.

While I was doing that, Sarah picked some cauliflower and strawberries. We're almost done with cauliflower now. They only give one picking per plant. Strawberries have just begun, however. I hope they continue through the whole summer.

When I went down to do the afternoon chores, I found that the broody hen had moved her nest out of the corner and further away along the wall. When I checked under her, she only had three eggs. She was sitting on six. It looks like something ate the other three. I suspect rats. I'm still having trouble with them. They've gotten wise to my traps. I need something new to get rid of them.

Stacey and I went up to Wellsville in the evening. We stopped at an Amish greenhouse on the way and bought a flat of gazanias. I have bare spots in the flowerbeds that still need to be filled. We stopped at a nursing home so Stacey could visit with someone she knew there. Then we went to Runnings for some hardware supplies – a new toilet plunger, a wax ring for the upstairs toilet, a spring augur to try and open a slow bathtub drain. All very romantic stuff. That's the kind of dates we go on. We're practical people.

When we got home, the sunset was beautiful. All the color was in the east, not in the west where the sun was actually going down.

Sunset looking east over the beaver pond.

Sunset over the potato patch.

Saturday___________________________________________

This morning when I went to check my live trap, the woodchuck was there, in the bee garden, unconcernedly having his breakfast. He (I've decided he is a male) watched me approach until I got very close and then ambled, right past my trap, around the pavilion wall, and into his burrow. I had a feeling he was mocking me with his casual pace. I moved the trap to a place that impedes his access to the garden and then spread bird netting over the flowers, hoping that, even if he avoids the trap, he'll get entangled in the netting.

This morning my favorite flower was not a poppy, but the Sarah Bernhardt peony that was in full bloom. The peonies are blooming late this year and there aren't many blossoms. That made this one seem especially beautiful. And it's fragrant.

My Sarah Bernhardt peony.

I undertook a big project today. Along the stone path through the long border there was a clump of yarrow that had become infested with quack grass and clover. There was no way to remove the weeds, so I dug out the whole patch. In its place, I planted the gazanias we bought yesterday. Just above that patch along the path was a bed of irises that was overgrown and full of weeds. Irises are hard to keep weed free. I dug them all out, sorted through them, teased the weeds out of their rhizomes, replanted the best of them and tossed the rest into the compost. It was a long and tedious process, but worth it. Those irises didn't bloom this year because they were so crowded. Next spring they should be beautiful.

Dividing and sorting irises.

Project completed.

Our grandchildren, Henry and Gwen, Geoffrey and Joni's two youngest, arrived in Pennsylvania this evening. They flew by themselves from Salt Lake to Pittsburgh. Miriam and Rachel picked them up at the air port. They will spend tonight and go to church with the Thayns tomorrow and then Miriam and Hannah will bring them here tomorrow evening along with some of the Thayn children. Geoffrey, Joni, and Ellie are going on a trek in Idaho this week and will be joining us on Saturday morning. Rachel, Tabor, and the rest of the Thayn children are coming up on Wednesday. Josiah and Vanessa, and Daniel, Raven, and Thistle arrive on Thursday. We are going to have a wonderful time!

Henry and Gwen arrive in Pittsburgh!

This evening, after all the work was done and dinner was eaten, I went back out to enjoy the garden. No work, just look and listen and breathe. The air had that Saturday evening vibe to it, a feeling I've felt all my life but can't really describe. Peaceful. A bit sad, but in a good way. A kind of end-of-things feeling.

Sunday_____________________________________________

If Saturday evenings have a special feeling, so do Sunday mornings. There was a time, when we had young children, that Sunday mornings could be hectic getting everyone ready for church. Now in our mature years, those days are gone. Sunday mornings are, usually, very calm. Being up before everyone else, I would say they are serene – these early summer Sabbath mornings especially so. This morning was a perfect example. It was cool (55°) and there was a little bit of fog, but the sky was clear and as the sun came up, that fog turned to a golden mist for a moment and then disappeared. It wasn't a quiet morning, but there were no human noises, just birds singing their morning hymn to the rising sun. If Saturday evenings have an end-of-things feeling, Sunday mornings have a new-world-beginning feeling to them.

On my Sunday morning walk: across the back yard.

On my Sunday morning walk: fragrant mock orange.

On my Sunday morning walk: home again.

On our way to and from church, I noticed how the roadside wildflower clock has ticked on from spring to summer. The dame's rocket, buttercups, and frothy white cow parsley are gone. Now the daisies, sweet clover, trefoil, and the first of the blue chicory are in bloom.

On the drive home from church.

When we got home, I took a walk around the garden. It's warm today, in the 80s, the first day in a heat wave that's supposed to stretch through the week. By Friday, we're going to be in the 90s. The garden seemed to glow in the heat. I admired the poppies. My Gertrude Jekyll rose has its first blossom. Now I'm sitting here waiting to be called to lunch, ready to wrap up this week's Journal. The week ahead will be hot and full of fun, family, festivities, and a bit of farming. I can hardly wait.

The first Gertrude Jekyll to open.

A selection of today's poppies.

Good Sabbath, and I hope you have a festive Independence Day celebration. God bless America!