Making what we can of July

Today starts our Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] farm's Summer Shares Season. I see it as the beginning of harvest season. The days are getting shorter, but not much cooler or less humid yet.  That's something to which we still look forward, along with, but hopefully arriving sooner than, leaves turning color.

mid-July acorn

Photo by J. Harrington

A replacement brush pile is almost in place so that, weather permitting, we can light it for celebrating "the time of Lughnasadh on August 1st...." (We'll not be sending a flaming wheel "rolling down the hillside at this time to symbolise the descent of the year towards Winter....") Acorns have started to develop in our oak trees. Last year we had an acorn mast drop the size of which we  hadn't seen in the quarter century we've lived here. This Summer we've seen a bumper crop of both red and gray squirrels. Several of the acorns tried to take root in the middle of some bare spots in the gravel drive. Buried by squirrels or pressed into the ground by vehicle tires? We've pulled each one that we've noticed so far. Oak acorns quickly develop tap roots that become near impossible to pull.

We're still looking forward to doing some fly-fishing. It seems as though every time the weather starts to cooperate, something else, like a CSA share pick up trip, comes along to disrupt the day and defer a fishing expedition. The streams we want to fish are about a 90 minute drive, one way, so, to make the ratio of fishing time to travel time reasonable, we want to be able to fish for at least a couple of hours. That requires better than half a day and this is not the time of year  when mid-day fishing is optimum. We know, everyone should have such problems. If the deer flies weren't as bad as they've been the past couple of weeks, we would at least have been in the  back yard practicing casting instead of inside reading about  fly  fishing. Have you noticed it's become more challenging to attain any kind of reasonable balance these days? Then again, the weather and the bugs have provided motivation to stay inside a cool, air-conditioned house as much as possible, which has helped limit our exposure to the COVID-19 virus. Would that we didn't have that silver lining to our clouds.

Black Oaks

by Mary Oliver

Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,

or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance
and comfort.

Not one can manage a single sound though the blue jays
carp and whistle all day in the branches, without
the push of the wind.

But to tell the truth after a while I'm pale with longing
for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen

and you can't keep me from the woods, from the tonnage

of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a
little sunshine, a little rain.

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
one boot to another -- why don't you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money,

I don't even want to come in out of the rain.

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