Showing posts with label farmers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label farmers. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

HERE COMES SUMMER..with its sights, scents, and sounds!

In June, I patiently search for the first signs of summer.

Listen closely, and you can hear the birdsong at sunrise. It’s the doves at our house who start the calliope of song if we leave our bedroom windows open. The nosy robins are back, nesting under our deck and in the rhododendron. Their first fledglings have already been booted out of the nest and intermittently (and annoyingly) squawk, calling for a parent. The brazen sparrows have also returned and have kicked the bluebirds out of their nesting box. Only one lone hummingbird visits our feeder.

Rain in June is a silver spoon as the old adage goes. It’s the month when vegetation emerges and gardens in the North are planted which will yield bountiful crops throughout the next four months and into fall. This year, my bucket garden has been watered quite often by the gray clouds hovering in the sky. I decided to change it up a bit. I’m growing some herbs: lemon thyme, rosemary, oregano, and parsley. Every year I grow a plant of basil on the patio.

The flower of June is the rose which is my favorite because of its soft, layered petals and delicate scent.

I was lucky to be born on a scorching, 90+ degree, June day—the last one of the month—right in the middle of haying season, as my Dad used to point out with a slight grumble in his voice.

When June arrives, farmers push hard during the sweltering sunny days to get a hay field cut, dried, and baled. The sweet and intoxicating scent of newly mowed grass fills the air and forces everyone near to pause and enjoy it, even if the work of cutting, baling, and storing it is hot, intense, and tiresome.

Do you have favorite sights, scents, and sounds of summer?

As poet James Russell Lowell so aptly writes about the month:

And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays: 
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten…

                                    ~ James Russell Lowell – 1819-1891

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Monday, June 3, 2019

"Rain in June is a silver spoon."


There is an old farmer’s saying, “Rain in June is a silver spoon,” and “A good rain in June sets all in tune.” This year, I think we all can easily say that the rains are welcome to stop for a little while and let the earth dry.
 
I’m going to be honest. June is one of my favorite months of the year. It’s my birthday month, but it ushers in the beginning of summer and warmer, sun-drenched days ahead.

Across our Central Pennsylvania landscape, the grass in the fields is lush and taller than knee-high. Fluffy clouds in a baby blue sky scud along on the breeze, and the air holds the sweet mingled scents of many different blossoms. One of my favorite flowers is the rose, which is also the flower of June.

I have tried to raise roses for many, many years. I’ve tried climbing, bush, miniature, tea, hybrid, knock-out—and the list goes on and on. What our friendly deer don’t eat, the remainder dies from the cold, freezing winters.

I have only a clump of old-fashioned rag roses left, which I dug out from around the foundation of an old house from the 1800s on our farm in Northeastern Pennsylvania. This hardy variety seems to be able to hold its own, despite the rabbits munching down the stalks under the snows.

If you have a favorite month of the year, please share it. If you have a favorite flower, please share that as well. 


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