Saturday at my niece’s house was warm and clear, weather perfect for lounging on her newly painted deck and enjoying the scents of clover and sun-heated greenery. At one point we visited the tent-like structure that acts as her greenhouse, where we found tomato and squash plants languid from thirst.
She dragged out the pocket hose and soaked all the pots. A bit languid myself by then, I requisitioned the nozzle and shot it directly into my mouth. The icy blast refreshed in a way that a glass from the sink might not have.
No matter how old you get, drinking from the hose is absurdly satisfying. That is, unless it’s a really old hose that tastes like melting plastic.
This one didn’t. All I got was the flavor of Anchorage H2O, which is better than any city water has a right to be. (Fun fact: It comes from a glacier.) The experience catapulted me back to my childhood, when playing outdoors was so important that you’d sometimes drink from the hose rather than waste time going inside.
I also remembered both my grandmother and a babysitter literally locking us out of the house in the summer. If we got thirsty on those high-90s days, we were advised to use the hose. Good times!
Drinking from the hose when you wanted to (vs. being forced to) was a glad summertime ritual. Anyone else remember these others?
- Going barefoot all week, until it was time to go to church
- Walking barefoot to the store, pretending the superheated asphalt wasn’t murderous (despite our toughened soles)
- Accepting that sweat was just part of summer’s attire
- Accepting mosquitoes and other bugs, too, since it was hard to avoid them (we lived in a marshy region)
- Rounding up enough neighborhood kids to play baseball until it was too dark to see the pitches
- Making sandwiches of tomatoes hot from the garden, on white bread with mayonnaise
- Riding bikes for hours, even though there was really nowhere to go
- Lying under trees because being out of the sun = air conditioning
- Climbing trees because gravity was really just a lifestyle option
- Scraping together 10 cents with your brother so you could buy a Milky Way to freeze until it was time to watch “Astro Boy,” “Speed Racer” and “Marine Boy” on UHF
- Forgetting, always, to cut the Milky Way in half before freezing it
However humble, they really were good times.
The edible landscape
Parts of our garden are just poking along, and I’m trying not to take it personally. My dad just told me that their tomatoes are a couple of weeks behind, too. It’s a rare year indeed when you can’t get a red tomato from a South Jersey backyard by July 24.
Our greens have gone berserk, however, necessitating salads most days. Lunch today was a chef’s salad. Red and green romaine, snippets from our celery plants, beet greens, chives, quinoa leaves and two kind of Asian greens were the bed on which rested sliced chicken and ham, slivers of cheese, a hard-boiled egg, and chopped tomato and cucumber.
Those last two were from the store, alas, thanks to the aforementioned slowdown. But the other veggies were marvelously fresh and flavorful, eaten as they were fewer than a dozen yards away from where they grew.
For dessert I enjoyed some of our own strawberries, whose texture and sweetness are indescribable to anyone who has never gardened. These vivid red fruits (see photo, above) have a texture entirely unlike the commercially grown varieties: They don’t squeak when you slice or bite them. And you must take them in stages, since most of ours are too big to be eaten whole. (That’s a quarter in the photo, not a nickel.)
What a delight to cleave into a fruit with your front teeth and find it tender enough that chewing isn’t necessary; a gentle push of the tongue against the roof of your mouth and the berry dissolves into a syrupy pulp. I haven’t used a drop of supplemental sweetness on this year’s crop, even though I come from a long line of folks who “sugar down” most fruits.
What a joy it is to eat food grown in your own dirt. And what a treasure the Alaska summer is for gardeners, especially when you’ve had a long stretch of sun.
Today we saw the first serious clouds since last Wednesday. A stiff breeze set in, stirring around air that smelled so delicious DF hurried to put the comforter out on the clothesline. We’ll sleep in the clouds tonight.
I watched the bedspread dance on the line, at times almost parallel with the ground due to the force of the wind. Then I noticed movement against the back fence, where some kind of ornamental grass grows. It’s taller than most NBA players and certainly more supple: When gusts hit hard, the stalks bent down almost to the ground and then buoyed gradually, gracefully back up once more.
I stared hard, filling my eyes with the spectacle and storing it for winter. Not too long from now that grass will be stiff and sere, ready to be flattened by hard rain and cloaked by deep snow. Some dark January day I’ll think back on the greenness of that grass, and channel its resiliency. Both images will remind me to hang in there until the bright days return.
Readers: Do you drink from the hose and/or have some other favorite summer rituals to share?
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Lovely writing, Donna. There’s something wonderful about enjoying every little bit of summer–whether it’s experienced by eyes, nose or tongue–and squirreling it away in the memory banks for those winter nights.
Nothing like food from the garden- our Jersey tomatoes are behind too. A. Beautiful post that brought back childhood memories.
I enjoyed this SO much! The summertime ritual described my summers in Georgia perfectly! I would give a lot to have a tomato sandwich like that again. The bare feet and bugs…not so much. A wonderful bit of nostalgia. Thanks !!
My own summers were in South Jersey, but I bet tomatoes grew pretty well in Georgia, too.
Ahhh, this really took me back to being a kid. I loved playing outside and I also hated wearing shoes. My parents actually grounded me because of my refusal to wear shoes lol.
This brought back so many memories! Taking a picnic to the local park… swimming in the city pool… endless games of whatever played “till the streetlights came on.” Going to the library on rainy days and bringing home a stack of books. Chocolate chip cookies and ginger ale for breakfast (can you tell my mom worked that summer?) Chipped ham sandwiches with mayo on white bread and Lemon Blennd (a citrus drink concentrate that you mixed with water) for lunch. Biggest punishment of all was having to stay indoors all day! The most beautiful two words in English are “summer afternoon.”
Barefoot down the gravel driveway to get the mail. Dreading adult swim at the public pool because we had to get out and be re-slathered with sunscreen by my redheaded mother. Biking everywhere, and leaving notes at the kitchen table telling my parents where I had gone, a phone number there and that I would return by dinner (calling their respective workplaces was reserved for vomit and bones broken only). Climbing so many trees. Popsicles. Neighbors’ blackberry and raspberry bushes, he didn’t mind we ate them.
My mom didn’t want us calling for every little thing, either. Early on I learned to make my voice sound very adult when I called the factory where she worked.
Getting the mail! That was sometimes a race to see who could get there first. We rarely got any mail ourselves — it was always bills and other adult stuff — but there was always the hope that a pen pal might have written.
Playing kick the can every Friday with all the neighborhood kids until it got too dark, lying on my back in the grass watching the wispy clouds go by (I grew up in Seattle), shelling peas that my Dad grew, riding bikes everywhere and two weeks of Girl Scout camp.
Funny you should mention peas: DF’s granddaughters just left, and they ate every ripe pea. The older one kept asking, “Isn’t this one ready?” (nope, sorry) and the one-year-old kept making the babysign for “more, please.” They also ate a ton of raspberries and all the strawberries I would allow.
His hope is that they’ll grow up with a firm understanding of where food comes from, i.e., from the soil.
I hated wearing shoes when I was a child. Putting them on for church was okay, but we begged Mama to let us go to town barefooted. We lived in a small town outside a capitol in the South. She never let us go to town barefoot! We had to deal with bees in the grass but soon learned they liked clover.
Drinking from the hose was not allowed, but we did it anyway, feeling daring for doing so.
There was some sort of low-growing plant we were forbidden to eat. We did it anyway. It is a wonder we survived. It was a plant that was tangy like lemon to chew. It had very small leaves, sort of like clover on a long stem. We figured chewing it and getting the juice was okay, but swallowing the leaves was the deadly part.
I remember sitting in the dirt under a Mimosa tree, playing with the pods and “cooking.” We all had our own little ball peen hammer and like to hammer things even when we did not have nails. We could get our hammers from the shed but could not get nails unless Daddy was there.
The whole place was ten acres with an abundance of pecan trees, plum trees, blackberries and other things we picked for Mama.
When I was a teen, we lived in a place with a two-acre front yard. I rode my bike in circles as fast as I could. Sometimes, I was allowed to ride down the country road across from our house. I rode so fast I was afraid I would lose control of my bike as it coasted and bounced down long stretches of sloping downhill pavement.
The back part was ten acres of woods and fields. We spent many happy hours picking up pecans from the trees there.
At two places we lived, we had pecan trees that gave us a little money and plenty of pecans for Mama to put on the top of fudge. I still love pecans.
We never could say we had nothing to do because we could sit down and peel the tar from the bottoms of our feet! We played baseball in the huge front yards of these two places. Indoors, we played jacks on the wooden floors.
In the summer we napped on a sheet on the cool wooden floors as a breeze from a fan further helped to cool us. Can you imagine how hard that floor was? But, it was cooler than a mattress that suffocated us and was higher and warmer.
In the heat of the day in summer we were not allowed to play in the sun. We had to play in the shade of a tree.
Thank you for bringing back fond…fond memories of youth. I can remember summer days with the smell of fresh cut hay in the air….the locusts singing their songs in the heat of the day….and drinking water from the hose that was so cold, it made your teeth hurt. Simpler times…Thanks once more…
The water is very cold here, too. (Glacier, right?) Private wells can be even colder; years ago, I recall a master gardener telling me that during a survey of local wells they found water coming out of the tap as cold as 35 degrees. Brrrrr…..
Oh geez, I get weepy reading this article and the comments. I share so many memories with so many writers. I think playing outside until dark and biking everywhere at a below tween age was so special. I found the library very special and checked out books from the time I was 8 and could ride my bike the mile there. Mainly I read in the summer. I read the Mary Poppins’ books over and over when I was 9 and checked out so many books that just transported me. Living on a cul de sac next to a cemetery in the fifties, I can remember reading in our screened porch and hearing the veterans doing gun salutes honoring buried veterans on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. And I treasure the fact I got baseball tickets to see the Tigers play and would take the bus there when very young to see them.. Seeing Al Kaline play!! At Briggs Stadium!
Thank you, Donna, for this article. I could do special memories as an adult as well. So many special times we have at every age and we forget to realize them.
The library! I loved the library, but we didn’t get to go as often as I’d have liked. What we did have — again, as a summer treat — was the bookmobile. Every couple of weeks it would lumber up to the elementary school, where we’d be waiting under a tree. It was maybe three-quarters of a mile to walk there and we always arrived early, to make sure we didn’t miss it.
Walking home with an armful of books was tantalizing: New things to read! And if I happened to have even a penny, I could stop in at the store and buy a piece of candy. Sometimes these quiet memories are the best.
Thanks for your kind words, and for leaving your own.
Thanks for this lovely piece of Alaskan summer joy.
Entirely unrelated: Talkeetna hit the European news here a few days ago. The passing away of their mayor would perhaps not have been a news item were it not for the identity of said mayor. But now it did. In view of their – very obvious – sense of humor I’m curious to know who the Talkeetna residents will choose as a replacement for the… cat (???) who was holding court there. A feline mayor, Andersen would have loved it. Knowing you visit the place every year I hope you can let us know when you hear or see the new mayor next time you visit the Bachelor Auction there.
I’ll let you know. Maybe in the interest of equality a sled dog will be nominated. Or a moose.
Many a time over the years I’ve thought to leave a reply, but I’m almost always reading on my phone and my fingers are too big for the keyboard (Excuses, excuses)! I’ve been following your posts for several years now, lurking, so happy to have found your blog. I enjoy so much of it. This post in particular struck a chord with me, as I recall childhood summer days. It’s a lovely post. Thank you for writing so eloquently and always being so informative.
Thanks for your kind words — and for de-lurking! Always interested in adding more voices to the conversation.
LOL! Now that I know how unsafe it is to drink from a hose, I sure don’t. But yes, in my mis-spent youth, I sure did.
Beside the Persian Gulf, where I grew up, there was no “summer vacation.” School went three months on and one month off. Gardens didn’t grow well in white sand, although two of our neighbors had ultra-green thumbs and were able to make some very nice produce grow. It wasn’t a summer thing, though; it was pretty much an all the time thing, because seasons weren’t very noticeable.
Childhood there was seven kinds of He!!, so I don’t care to recall it much and you may be very sure, indeed, that I don’t wax sentimental about it.
But I do remember, when we came back to the states, loving the laundry on the line at my Great Grandmother’s house, and the big garden of fuschias and roses in the front yard. And San Francisco was grand in a time when a 13-year-old could ride the buses and streetcars without any adult paranoia interfering, and the fog would roll in and out, and my great-uncle and aunt worked at the Morrison Planetarium, and my best friend and I would go fishing in Lake Merced the minute we got out of school.
But…well, those memories are limited. The best memory is growing up and getting free of being a kid! 😉
Reading and freezing iced tea in the ice cube trays for cheap treats!
For us it was freezing Kool-Aid in ice cube trays. Then my mother went to a Tupperware party and bought a popsicle mold. Heaven!