It chore seems like Summer!

What with one thing or another, including a need to respray some poison ivy and begin collecting last Winter's downed branches, the Summer Solstice bonfire is being rescheduled to celebrate Independence Day (not the movie, the Declaration) in a little more than a week. Meanwhile, we need to get caught up on more Summer chores. But first, some reading!

In hope and anticipation of one day again being able to feel as though this country is headed in a decent direction, today we picked up, at our local independent book store, a copy of Sarah Kendzior's The View from Flyover Country. It will be very interesting to see how it compares to Arlie Russell Hochschild's Strangers in Their Own Land, which we read a year or so ago.

Back to the outdoors front -- our challenge over the next few days is to learn (Yoda reminds us "Learn, or do not, there is no try") how to distinguish boneset from alyssum. We think we have some of each growing on the property but, thus far, only recognize "small white flowers." We've left a few patches of one or the other or both as we cut the "grass" this month and it's time, with all our rain and misty mornings, to mow again. As an aside, crown vetch has come in along most of the roadsides during this past week.

boneset? (white flowers)

Photo by J. Harrington

alyssum?

Photo by J. Harrington

Mowing

Robert Frost, 1874- 1963

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

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