It’s chilly out tonight, so it doesn’t really feel like the
Summer Solstice is upon us, but it’s come and gone. It’s sweater wearing
weather, which feels so strange in June after the last couple of sweltering
summers we’ve all been through, but for me it’s a sweet reminder of my
childhood. I grew up in Sagaponack, not year round, but every weekend and every
summer and I remember summer evenings just like this one. We’ve see a few
fireflies already, but for me they were a July sensation, captured in a jar when
my skin was already the deep brown that comes from wearing a bathing suit all
day long. We never needed air-conditioning
when I was a child, just screens in the windows and perhaps a fan or two on a
few August nights.
As I sit writing this on the kitchen porch I can hear the
sound of the ocean and the petals of my ballerina rose drop slowly as if
dancing with or curtseying to the evening cool breeze. I am not minding what
everyone else is calling an unseasonably cool June -- I like it. The roses are
loving it, no heat and thus no black spot, the fungus needing the combination
of humidity and heat to start its relentless attack. There’s talk that using a
combination of milk and water to spray the roses will slow the creep of the
fungus, but I am now just reveling in a June with roses billowing like
overstuffed pillows and kousa dogwoods dripping pink and white.
There are no June bugs tonight, but that’s okay, it feels
like the earth is slowly stretching into summer, and the June bugs will be
bouncing off the screens again soon. I too, like those awkward brown beetles,
am nestling into a quieter sleep on these cool evenings, and life is good.
I picked snow peas from my garden this evening and after
steaming them for just seconds, had a plateful for dinner. No butter, no salt,
just sweet bright green deliciousness. I even shared a few with the dachshunds.
Perfect summer meal. Three days ago I cut enough garlic scapes to dress both my
forearms with bangles of green up to my elbows. The pesto will last all summer
long. The hydrangeas are
recovering, my tomatoes are starting to expand, the dahlias are about 8 inches
high and it all feels right to me.
The weeds are a little relentless, but the cool evenings
mean I’m not too tired and exhausted from the heat of the day to pull out the
armfuls I must remove each evening after work. I am making a dent. Not a big
dent, but it is progress. This summer is teaching me to be patient. To wait and
them appreciate each bud as it opens. Yes the peonies came and went too fast,
the rain did mine in, but the mock orange is an intoxicating perfume that more
than makes up for it.
I am learning, after decades of gardening that each year is
different. There is no certainty in my garden anymore. The winter was hard on
my skimmia, eighteen years of beauty, and now it’s still looking bad, but my
yellow magnolia that we thought for sure was a goner, has reveled in it’s hard
chop that left thigh thick trunks exposed, trunks that are now pushing handfuls
of luscious new growth. I lost a number of crape myrtles, but the spirea is
bountiful. I am learning to appreciate the stalwart garden standards more.
Viburnums had a magnificent spring, and my apples and pears
are laden with small fruits. My hive survived the cold and threw off a new
colony into one of the abandoned hives that remains from last year’s deaths.
Those bees persevered through the cold with a strength that gave me all the
fruit that’s slowly forming, and even my fig is pushing out new growth from its
roots. Sure the hydrangeas are smaller this year, but that’s just an
opportunity to tuck dark pink nicotianas into the spaces and give my resident
hummingbirds more floral dining options.
The smell of privet is something we don’t get much anymore.
Too many hedges are tamed; few are left to roll wild and free like the waves on
the beach. There are buds on my privet and I am loath to prune it. My childhood
home had a hedge that ran perpendicular to the road that was as tall as the
house itself. The only thing taller was the ancient beech that stood solitary
to the west. I loved that hedge and it’s wild unruly scent. There was no
pruning of it, who would have even known where to start. It billowed waves of
summer into our bedrooms when the cool air danced into our rooms each night.
That was the beginning of summer for me each year, not the ending of school,
although that too was lovely.
There were no gardeners in my family, so I didn’t know that
having butterfly bushes that topped out above the garage was unusual. There was
milkweed growing wild in the fields that were not plowed, milkweed that feed
butterflies and gave us magic, silken pods that released dancing ladies each
fall. And that flower’s scent I mess as well.
Back when there were only handful of houses on Hedges Lane,
the night sky still smelled the same as it does now, the air still tasted the
same and listening to the rhythmic pounding of the sea was a quiet, easy way to
drift off to sleep. To still have those same joys now is a gift that I am happy
to receive.
Paige Patterson came home with three new hydrangeas tonight,
who even knew there were still hydrangeas out there she didn’t already own.
No comments:
Post a Comment