By Jill Williams
“The change always comes about mid-August, and it always catches me by surprise. I mean the day when I know that summer is fraying at the edges; that September isn’t far off and fall is just over the hill or up the valley.”— Hal Borland
A summer like this one with lots of rain makes the ordinary extraordinary. There is a large bed of orange day lilies outside my kitchen window. I had never taken too much notice of them to be honest; the deer graze on the foliage in the spring and then they bloom in the summer. This year with so much rain these plain orange day lilies turned into a solid mass of orange with their foliage hardly visible. How had I not paid them much attention before?
Trailing nasturtiums beside the house are another ordinary flower that is extraordinary this year. I could barely keep nasturtiums alive last year in the drought conditions; this year’s are a riot of colour and at mid-summer they’re spectacular. Having enough of these to have to deadhead them every day is something I don’t take for granted now.
In amongst the various colours of the trailing nasturtiums are several beautiful white Easter lilies. No one is more surprised than me to see these blooming. I had tried before (quite unsuccessfully)to overwinter them. The ones I have now were given to me last fall. I sank the pots in the vegetable garden since I didn’t think that they would amount to anything. I’m very glad to have been proved wrong in any case. They make a nice counterpoint to the more gaudy orange Asiatic lilies in the same bed.
Nature added two more plants close to the nasturtiums: the small orange flowers of the Jewelweed or Touch-me-not(Impatiens) and a couple of Helleborine orchids (Epipactis helleborine). Helleborine orchids aren’t rare; they’re a bit weedy and I usually pull them out. But one of these was getting so tall and impressive looking that I just had to leave it be. I’m glad I did as it looks like it belongs there.
I have always found that being surrounded by wild plants is an advantage. Nature quite often finishes a composition that I have started in a way that I couldn’t have ever foreseen.
Nature, after all, planted the flowering crab by the garage in exactly the right place. I didn’t know that I wanted a tree there but now I can’t imagine it not being there.
The vegetable garden sweet peas appear to be heading for their best year ever. They might even cover their ugly metal trellis which would be a blessing. These last few years I have been too lazy to channel my inner Martha and build them a hazel trellis. I have only been trying to grow great sweet peas for a couple of decades now. This year we might actually be approaching greatness.
There is lots of bird life here in the valley in mid-summer. Both the phoebes in the side porch and the robins by the vegetable garden were a vocal presence; the robins were the louder of the two. I’m glad that I didn’t have to do too much watering this year; when I did water in the vegetable garden both robin parents shrieked long and loud at me.
The robins built their nest in the burning bush which was badly damaged in the ice storm. I cut most of it off and it grew back very thickly. So thickly that I couldn’t even find the nest at first. Baby robins have a face that only a mother could love as the saying goes. The baby phoebes, on the other hand, are smaller and much more elegant even in their early fluffy stage.
The phoebe parents didn’t like it when I watered beside the house. They flew from the nest to the garage and back again and cheeped at me. They were much quieter than the robins but they did make it plain that I should go back in the house and stop bothering them.
The phoebes flew away towards the end of July. The robins will take a little longer but soon they’ll be gone, too. Both of these were second families.
Gardening isn’t the only pastime that’s more enjoyable when we have had a lot of rain. Not worrying about fire risk this year has made it a lot easier to relax and sit outside and read a good book.
I read and enjoyed three books in Jean-Luc Bannalec’s Brittany mysteries series this summer. These are Death of a Master Chef (bk 9), An Island of Suspects (bk 10) and The Secrets of the Abbey (bk 11). All of them are interesting and did a good job of transporting me temporarily to Brittany. The many descriptions of food and folklore are wonderful. I’m looking forward to The Winemaker’s Secret (bk 12) which comes out next year.
And since everyone seems to be talking about The Odyssey, I have finally started to read a book I was given a few years ago. This is the T. E. Lawrence(Lawrence of Arabia) translation of Homer’s Odyssey. The edition I have was published by Oxford University Press in 1940 under the pen name T. E. Shaw. It was apparently written between 1928 and 1932 while Lawrence was serving as an RAF mechanic. It’s a prose translation and is so far easy to read. I don’t think I could face that many pages of verse… This year at midsummer I think happiness is a good book and a full rain barrel.