#HappyFathersDay!

Last night's solstice was duly celebrated with a backyard "bonfire" after dinner. We lucked out with a brief period of showers ending at 4:30 pm or so and friends we'd not seen for awhile showing up. As we were watching the fire, I wandered into the field behind the house and noticed, for the first time this year, that the sheep sorrel has matured and is about to start flowering. When that happens it will add a nice reddish tone to the fields.

Summer solstice: torching the brush pile

Photo by J. Harrington

On the North side of the brush (mostly buckthorn) pile, I noticed a few poison ivy vines that had started growing. Usually, poison ivy grows at wood's edge, not in the midst of a grassy field. My speculation is that birds had fed on the poison ivy berries; subsequently perched on the brush pile branches; defecated the seeds from the berries, and the ivy got enough shade / edge effect from the brush pile to feel right at home. Fortunately, I avoided stepping in it or burning it yesterday. Today I sprayed it with poison ivy killer. The same seed deposition pattern would explain a cluster of poison ivy I've already sprayed that "magically" appeared in a field near the road next to a telephone pole. To paraphrase Joe Cocker, "like a bird on a wire..." helps explain the magic of those new strands of poison ivy.

Sometime this week we'll start rebuilding a brush pile in time for another fire to celebrate one or more of the feasts of Lughnasadh (August 1), the Autumn equinox (around September 21) or Samhain (Halloween). There's more buckthorn to be pulled and burning seems the most straightforward way to get rid of it.

May all of you, and your fathers, and your grandfathers, and your sons and daughters and wives and mothers enjoy a healthy, safe, happily memorable Father's Day that carries through the Summer.

Digging

By Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb   

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   

Bends low, comes up twenty years away   

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

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