Monday was Labor Day, a sad holiday to me. I know it was originally designated as a day to celebrate the working people who built America, but it has never really meant that to me. To me it is the holiday marking the end of summer. The day began cold, foggy, and dripping with dew. I was shivering as I went down to do the chores and take my morning walk, but I had to admit the sunlight shining through the fog was beautiful. I saw a fog rainbow, an arc of faint color to the west over the beaver pond. I tried to photograph it, but it didn't work.
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| Across the front yard, Monday morning. |
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| The beaver pond. |
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| Coming back through the meadow. |
Early that morning, Sarah and Tosh left to go downstate for a few days. They dropped their dog, Maverick, off here, and picked up a load of produce from our garden to take to the Thayns.
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| A wagonload of produce for the Thayns. |
Holiday or not, I had things to do on Monday—lots of labor, which seemed an appropriate way to spend the day. It was 38° at sunrise, so I waited until the day had warmed a little before starting. While I waited, I looked at bulb catalogs. It's that time of the year when the fall bulb catalogs begin to arrive in the mail. The timing is perfect. The bulb companies know that, of course. With this year's garden winding down, they know a gardener's heart turns toward visions of spring. I know mine does. While I'm clearing away the wreckage of this year's garden, all I can think of is what I need to plant now, in the dying days, that will fill these beds with flowers when the world wakes up again. Crocuses, tulips, daffodils, squill, fritillaries, snow drops, hyacinths, muscari—the very names fill me with hope as I utter them. To put dormant bulbs in the earth in September and October is an act of faith that spring will come again. I receive a dozen catalogs and I read each one, cover to cover—some of them several times. Then I make a list of the things that appeal to me—tulips in a certain color range, a new daffodil, more purple and white crocuses. And can you ever have too many hyacinths? I compare prices among the different catalogs, and compile my list. It always starts out overly ambitious—and too expensive. Sadly, affordability is the biggest limiting factor in my planning. If I had a million bucks, my yard would look like Keukenhof. But I do what I can.
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| Keukenhof Gardens in The Netherlands. |
By 9:30 it was 55°, and that was good enough. I had a list of projects to work on. I chose mulching first. Between cutting down our two maple trees and Fosters cutting down ten pine trees and chipping all the branches, I had two large piles of mulch to use. I'd already used some of it—maple chip mulch in the front flowerbed and around my fruit trees, and pine chip mulch on the blueberry rows—but there was still a lot left. I carried maple mulch by the bucketful and spread it under the trees at the edge of the front yard along the road. They cast shade and the grass doesn't grow well under them, so I mulched there. In the woodland garden, I have two woodland azaleas that like acidic soil, so I mulched under them with pine chips. Then Kurt came over with his tractor and moved the rest of the maple mulch. He dumped some on the path that leads to the upper part of the barn. It runs between two fences that go around that chicken yard. I call it the alley. Now it is covered with a nice layer of chipped maple. Next I weeded my blackberry row along the edge of the orchard and mulched it with pine mulch. I like having piles of mulch at my disposal.
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| The mulched alley. |
We had a cookout over at the Shilligs at noon. Kurt and Julie are temple workers at the Palmyra Temple and they invited a couple, fellow workers, who are on a temple mission from Arizona, to join us. We had hot dogs, hamburgers, watermelon, pistachio salad, pasta salad, potato salad, deviled eggs, seven layer salad, and baked beans—an all-American menu.
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| Labor Day cookout on the Shillig's porch. |
At 3:00 the power went out. There was an accident up the road. Someone hit a telephone pole. The power was off for several hours. I was out in the garden all that time, so I didn't really notice. Hannah was in the middle of doing her laundry and, with no electricity, had to resort to hanging her clothes out on the clothesline to dry. Primitive living. Later that afternoon, Kurt and I started digging up potatoes. We only harvested part of the smaller potato patch. We got a bushel of nice red potatoes. We still have half the small patch and all of the big patch to harvest. That's going to be a lot of potatoes.
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| The first potatoes. |
At the end of the day, as I often do, I went out to sit in the garden and watch the day close down. I have a chair in my vegetable garden beside some washtubs planted with petunias where I usually sit. There are other places where I could sit, but the petunias are fragrant in the evening and I love their scent, so that's where I sit.
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| My seat by the petunias. |
In September, I really begin to mind the shortening of the days. The mornings are so dark now. During the month, we will lose about 77 minutes of daylight—more than an hour lost to the dark. That makes every hour of light seem even more precious to me. I hate wasting daylight. I want to go outside as soon as I can, but unfortunately, with the decreasing hours of sunshine, the earth is also cooling. Mornings are very chilly now and very dewy. I find myself waiting for things to get warmer and drier before beginning the day. To keep from fussing during the idle time, I created a project. I found that there is a program online that will read scanned copies of my handwritten journals and transcribe them into editable text. I dug out the box from under the eaves that contains my journals and began scanning pages. The online program lets me do 50 pages a month for free, and I'm cheap, so that's the pace I'll be moving at.
Tuesday's big project was fortifying the chicken coop against rats and anything else that thinks it can tunnel under the wall. I went down in the morning and dug a trench along the front foundation and pulled out all the cinderblocks and stones that I'd piled there over the years. Later Miriam came down and helped me. We rolled out hardware cloth, bent it into an "L," and laid it in the trench. Then we set cinderblocks on it and filled in the trench. We had some leftover hardware cloth, so we replaced the plastic screen on one door with it. It was a long, dirty, and hot project, but I'm glad it's done. I haven't found a rat, trapped or poisoned, in a week. I hope our Chicken Fortress will be able to withstand any further invasions.
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| The fortified front of the chicken coop. |
I ran errands on Wednesday and when I got back, I spent the afternoon mowing. I can't believe how the grass is still growing. We should be approaching the end of the mowing season, but it's growing like it's May. I was glad I finished mowing that afternoon because later it rained.
Thursday evening our friends the Lewises came for dinner. Al's 90th birthday was on Saturday and we wanted to celebrate with them. We had meatloaf, potatoes, baked cauliflower, tomatoes, watermelon, and for dessert, peanut butter brownies. Many of the menu items came straight from the garden. We had a pleasant evening eating and chatting.
On Friday afternoon, we left to go down to the Thayns' house. Rachel was scheduled to have her baby on Saturday and we wanted to be there. We left home at 4:00 laden with produce from the garden. The drive is long—four-hours—and uncomfortable for me. About half-way there, I can't find a comfortable position to sit in anymore. I try to sleep most of the way if I can. We arrived at the Thayns' at 8:00 and settled in for the night.
Rachel and Tabor went to the hospital around noon on Saturday. At the house, we worked on projects, cleaning, playing, waiting for any news. At 5:00 nothing much was happening at the hospital. Stacey and I went over for a short visit. They had Rachel on an oxytocin drip, but labor hadn't begun yet. We came back to the house and waited some more. By bedtime, nothing had happened. At 2:00 Sunday morning, the baby was finally born. She weighed 9 pounds, 7 ounces, and was 21 3/4 inches long.
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| The last photo of the family with only five children as they leave for the hospital. |
Sunday morning at the house we all dressed and went to church. On the way home from church we stopped at the hospital to meet the new baby. Rachel looked good. The baby was adorable. We took turns holding her and cooing over her. I forgot how very precious new life is. You might be wondering why I refer to the baby as just the baby. As of this writing, they still hadn't settled on a name for her. No matter what she will be called, she is a precious and welcome addition to our family. She is our tenth grandchild.
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| Saying hello to the new one, |
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| Meeting her grandpa. |
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| A happy grandma. |
After our visit, we came back to the house, had lunch, and went on with the day. We decided to stay another night. This morning Stacey, Hannah, and I left to come home. We left Miriam there to help out for the week. Rachel and the baby were due to be released later in the afternoon. We arrived home at noon. Stacey and Hannah went to work for the rest of the day. I worked on some laundry, took a tour of the garden, went down to visit the chickens, and here I am, finishing the journal. So we are home and unpacked, and at the start of a new week. It looks like the week ahead will be mild and good working weather. That's good because I have plenty of work to do.
