Tender Time of Year

Daylilies

This is the tender time of year, when – despite some truly remarkable house-shaking thunder boomers and torrential downpours, and several brain-melting 90+ degree days – the leaves on the trees are that not-yet-dusty, new and tender, many shades of fresh green. The flowers in bloom now are fragrant and come in heart-wrenching hues, and the field is dusted with tiny wild forget-me-nots and red and white clovers, hawk-weed and cinquefoil, a few white violets and bind weed, and the fragrant thyme and heathers and 

Red Clover

milkweeds that are just starting to bloom. In the garden, the pea shoots – mine are more than 12 inches high now and starting to wind their tendrils around the open tomato cages I use as pea fences – and young lettuces, shallots, onions, emerging beans, and even the tiny carrots and beets seem at once fragile and vigorous. Even the indoor plants are dancing in the summer solstice energy – one of my Christmas cactuses is in bloom, the pinkflowerii prittithang (see Bloom Now or Die!) which had retreated back to a few sad-looking leaves after its winter riot of flowers, has renewed itself with fresh leaves and many many flowers; and the calla lilies are lush and purple-trumpeted.
 

Calla Lilies in Window

The ancient lady of the marsh has emerged and is using the sandy bank across the  driveway as her egg-incubating space this year (see Old Lady Snapper); I missed her visit, but the Husband checked her out carefully, and she ignored him pointedly. Buzzy Boy (see Cranky Wings) is back and quite vigorously defending his feeders from all other hummer intruders. I complicated his world this year by adding a third feeder to patrol. He has already chased me back from the garden twice when I was out too late to suit his sense of propriety. It’s sweet and makes my heart twist a little when I hear his loud buzzing near my head. Yesterday morning there was a little lady hummer hovering near him as he stopped to see what I was doing to his flowers in the pots on the wart; as soon as I stopped dead-heading and straightened up to get a good look, he chased her away, but I have to wonder…is there romance in the air?

Passion Flower

There are also lots and lots of butterflies this year, and lots and lots and lots of scary ticks. Much as I’d like to go check out the edges of the marsh that surrounds us, I’m not going into the tick-ridden wooded area in the Back 40. We’re picking enough ticks off us daily without adding that extra danger – I’ve even equipped my office in the Upper Valley with a tick spoon for removing attached ticks from patients, of which there have been not a few this year.

Young Peas

The Actress and the Inventor (see Have Camper, Will Travel) are well back from their winter journeys and settled into a little borrowed nest and summer jobs. The Tall Dude, however, has just set off on a summer adventure to the wild west, in a newly-tricked-out truck he can sleep and cook in. He got his garden planted before he left, and he’s leaving it to go feral while he’s gone, except for the little help it’ll get from friends when they have time to spare from their own gardens. It will be an interesting experiment.

Johnny-Jump-Ups Taking Over: Flower or Weed?

Every night around midnight for several weeks I’ve been hearing an owl concerto.  I think it’s Great Horned Owls, but could be a Barred Owl or two are out there, too. The concert moves from the north-west side of the house to the south-east over the course of an hour or so; or maybe it’s me who’s moving, and the owls are all about and I’m hearing them from the end of the house where I’m closest to an open window. When I looked up owl noises on the Audubon internet site, I was greatly amused to discover there’s an owl down south and west called a Burrowing Owl – the photo is priceless.

This solstice time, this tender time of the year with its longest day is a sad time for some folks, like the Husband, who says that it’s all downhill from here until December’s winter solstice. For the rest of us it’s the beginning of the great summer push: will we get everything that needs to be done in relatively fine weather completed before winter sets its great hoary butt down on our heads  again? Wood split and stacked, windows replaced, roofs retiled, walls painted, decks repaired, gardens grown and harvested and kept weed-free enough to be profitable? Will we find the time to have a yardsale, will we get a day or two to spend on the coast, will there be a few lazy days to spend on the screened-in whatever, dozing away some sweet hours listening to the birds call, the wind gentle the windchimes, the leaves in the trees rustle their soothing hush?

O! Peony!

Time won’t come to us, we need to make it. So right now, before you forget to do it and it’s suddenly September, mark out some time on your summer calendar and call it sacred. Don’t break it for any excuse less than a fire or a death. Tell everyone you know that you’re going to be gone during those times; that you’ll be somewhere interesting where phones and computers and all that kind of gear doesn’t work. And then, while it’s still the tender time of year, while your heart is still full of hope and summer dreams, decide how you’ll use that sacred time. 

Fava Beans

Potato Plants in Flower

Make some lemonade – squeeze some actual lemons, and add a little ground cloves, or a rosemary sprig, or some thyme, to make it more exotic. Sip and consider and mark out your chosen days. If the time comes for a sacred day and it’s raining, don’t despair – spend the day on the porch reading, or find someplace to go for summer tea instead. Be sure to include some picnics in your list, to watch the sun go down from up the mountain. Be sure to include a day or two for doing absolutely nothing. Vow not to pull a single weed, or pile a single stick of firewood, or paint a single stroke or hit a single nail on those chosen days.

Instead, embody summer: drift through the garden, sparkle in the waves, float above the trees.  Let the blue sky, the colors of flowers, take over your eyes and your mind. Chase fireflies. Flutter amongst the blooms. Glitter at the pond’s edge at dusk. Sing a concerto outdoors at midnight. 

Happy Solstice!

For the blog: June 22, 2017. All photos Deb Marshall

Sunflower, Tarragon, Chives