August got here somehow, without neither my notice nor my consent. I was shocked the other day when DF mentioned its being the eighth month of the calendar. Seems just the other day it was summer solstice.
Then again, time has become weirdly fluid since the pandemic began, and especially since the pandemic killed my dad. Some months feel endless and others disappear almost without a trace.
This has been an odd, mostly cool summer save for a stretch of high-70s and at least one 80-degree day. The thermometer in the illustration is on my niece’s back porch – and it was in the shade. Obviously people in the Lower 48 are struggling with much hotter temperatures. All I can say is that 80 degrees up here feels hotter than it sounds.
Today it’s supposed to hit the low 70s. This morning DF and I did our usual tour of the back yard, to water greenhouse plants if needed, check on the progress of the plants and see if there are any strawberries we could have for breakfast. That’s another weirdness about summer up here: We get strawberries into late summer, whereas when I was a kid the berries were finished by early June.
The berries here are bigger, too:
The sun was warm (it was almost 60 degrees at that point), and the gentle breeze lifted up all sorts of fragrances. Not sure how much actual aroma can be had from fireweed, poppies, and pea and strawberry blossoms but taken together with big swatches of clover, they made an irresistible and intoxicating mix. I smelled growth. Life. Sustenance.
But not for much longer. Within a couple of weeks I’ll be able to detect the slow slide toward decay. Plants and grasses die back, rhubarb leaves shrivel and melt, raspberry canes darken and shrink down on themselves.
This morning, however, was still glorious. “I’m imprinting this for January,” I called to DF as I took deep breaths of the morning’s promise.
Summer is fleeting
Anyone who lives in a northern climate knows what I mean. Soon, much too soon, it won’t be possible to go outdoors in short sleeves if there’s any kind of wind blowing. It’ll be shoes, not flip-flops; a coat, not a jacket or hoodie.
So I feast my eyes on those last couple of pale pink roses, the startling yellow of pumpkin blossoms, the delicate white pea blossoms amid a sea of green leaves and dangling pods. I allow myself to be mesmerized by the improbable fuchsia of fireweed, which is racing up to the top of the stalk, dammit: Local lore holds that when fireweed is bloomed out, summer is over.
I feel the sun on my skin and the tickle of damp grass on my toes when I kneel to pick berries. I laugh at the twisty-twirly garlic scapes that turn themselves into pretzels and curlicues. I listen to the hum of bees as they clamber across the sunflowers that DF started in pots back when there was still snow on the ground.
I nibble a few raspberries before breakfast. The patch is finally producing, up to 1½ quarts per night. If the next few days turn out as warm as predicted, we’ll likely be getting two quarts or more at a clip. Good thing, since our goal is 26 quarts to freeze and at least another 10 jars of jam.
The apples are a bit sluggish, too: lots of them, but slow to grow. I want to urge them on, lest we get an early frost before they’re ready. They’ll become applesauce, dried apples and apple juice if they make it to maturity. Since someone gave us a half-pint of cinnamon-apple jelly, I’m interested in giving that a try as well.
All those foods, and all those memories, will get me through the dark days of the year. Specifically, they will get me through January.
January is the cruelest month. September is for harvesting and food preservation. October is for relaxing after the garden and greenhouse have been put to bed. November and December are about preparing for the holidays. February is usually the month things turn around for me, because light is beginning to return in earnest.
In March we start the celery plants, and make plans for other seeds to be started the next month. April is about watching the seedlings grow, and May is “almost time to plant out!” month. We shouldn’t put plants in the ground until Memorial Day, but most years we push it a little for certain hardy crops.
January just stinks, though. That’s when it seems real sunlight – let alone summer – might never come again. DF tends to have a bonfire near or shortly after winter solstice, a paganistic throwback to when our ancestors would signal the sun. We have indoor fires, too, and the sight of those leaping flames reminds me that warmth can be had.
So I imprint summer on days like this one. Even though I have work to do, I find ways to get out of the house. An ergo break to stretch my legs – around the yard. The necessity of checking the greenhouse plants, which might need more water. Maybe I should pull some Red Sails lettuce for my lunchtime sandwich, or cut a stalk of the new-growth rhubarb to surprise DF with a “bluebarb” pie.
After all, the work will still be there later. The sun won’t last forever.
Related reading:
Got my first tomato last week, and yesterday picked some green beans and a handful of cherry tomatoes. Looks like end of August or September will be when everything comes in for me.
Is that later than usual, or normal for where you live?
We had a handful of cherry tomatoes earlier today, but the big ones are slow to ripen. Last year we had our first tomato on Aug. 1, but none of them is near ripening. Sigh.
I’m in PA, close to Gettysburg, and Westminster, MD. We usually have ripe stuff in mid July.
Weird year for everyone, I guess.
Lovely commentary on living presently with nature. Thank you 😊
Those strawberries look amazing.
This is my second year tending our small “quarantine project” garden. Everything seems later here, too. Our sole tomato is still as green and hard as a tennis ball. The tomatillos are still in blossom, and while we had a few precocious peppers, most of the plants are just beginning to set fruit. New this year, I put a mini butternut and a mini watermelon plant right in the ground without preparing the soil, to see what happens. The vines are growing nicely and a tiny fruit has set on each. And in the front yard, I am tending several pumpkin patches so kindly planted by the squirrels, with whom I’m expecting a standoff at harvest time.
Channel your inner Yosemite Sam: “Come at me, ya dadgum varmints!”
I hope your garden will produce (heh heh) a bumper crop by the end of the month.
Thank you! I was thinking you could make a nice tart with your strawberries. Notice I was careful not to say you *would* make a nice tart. Not that you wouldn’t.
Oh, I can be as tart-y as any other South Jersey girl.
Who would, of course, pronounce it “strawburry.”
Don’t forget wooder them.
This isn’t the first time I have read your words and have felt that I was right there in your garden and yard with you. The sounds, colors and aromas are so very real when you describe them. I definitely had my “Aaaaahhhhhh…” moment of the day. And can I say those Strawberries look absolutely perfect!
Why, thank you! I appreciate it.
And yes, those strawberries are amazing. One of DF’s sons said it was the first time he’d ever eaten strawberries that were “red all the way through.” (As opposed to the supermarket version that are pale and squeak when you bite them.)
Those strawberries look so tasty! Here on the Gulf coast, I am looking eagerly toward fall and cooler weather. We have had a moderate (for us) summer: highs mostly in the low to mid 90s. However, I get less heat tolerant with age.
Glad you weren’t hit by the triple-digit pain so much of the Lower 48 has felt. The humidity, though…After decades in the dryness, I have less tolerance for moisture when I visit family on the East Coast.