Summer pleasures in the mid-North

A small handful of Baltimore oriole fledgelings arrived at the nectar feeder this morning, or is it that a handful of small Baltimore oriole fledglings arrived? The fledglings weren’t much smaller than their parents, and neither was there a superabundance of them. In either case, having had adult birds visiting off and on all season, it was a real treat to see “the kids.” As one of my favorite poets observed “In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: it goes on.” ~ Robert Frost

One of our local tv stations occasionally labels a forecast as a “top ten weather day.” If I had had my wits about me, I would have tracked the number of times they’ve labeled a day “top ten. ” I suspect it may be more than ten times over the season. I just started a spreadsheet. Now I need to remember, as Mary Oliver tells us, to “pay attention.” Plus, I can poke around and see if I can find some weather archives online. I have nothing against top ten days. I do think we would all be better off if more things actually meant what they said. Maybe that’s already the situation here. Nowhere can I find the rest of the phrase “top ten weather day for the week, month, season, year....”  See what paying attention can do for you?

We’re off to pick up our Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] share this afternoon. This week’s goodies include:

• BROCCOLI
• CUCUMBERS
• PURSLANE
• ROMAINE LETTUCE
• ZEPHYR SUMMER SQUASH
• ZUCCHINI

roadside veggies season

Photo by J. Harrington

Many decades ago I developed an intense dislike for zucchini when all our friends had gardens producing an excess of it that got donated at us. Enough is enough. There IS such a thing as too much vanilla ice cream if served over a short span. Plus, in those days, I’m not sure that things like zucchini fritters had been developed by folks suffering the tortures of excess zucchini. I’m looking forward to trying zucchini fritters. Maybe I can avoid eating zucchini bread this year.

Photosynthesis 

Ashley M. Jones 

When I was young, my father taught us
how dirt made way for food,
how to turn over soil so it would hold a seed,
an infant bud, how the dark could nurse it
until it broke its green arms out to touch the sun.
In every backyard we’ve ever had, he made a little garden plot
with room for heirloom tomatoes, corn, carrots, 
peppers: jalapeno, bell, and poblano—
okra, eggplant, lemons, collards, broccoli, pole beans,
watermelon, squash, trees filled with fruit and nuts,
brussels sprouts, herbs: basil, mint, parsley, rosemary—
onions, sweet potatoes, cucumber, cantaloupe, cabbage, 
oranges, swiss chard and peaches,
sunflowers tall and straightbacked as soldiers,
lantana, amaryllis, echinacea, 
pansies and roses and bushes bubbling with hydrangeas. 
Every plant with its purpose.
Flowers to bring worms and wasps. How their work matters here. 

This is the work we have always known,
pulling food and flowers from a pile of earth.
The difference, now: my father is not a slave,
not a sharecropper. This land is his and so is this garden,
so is this work. The difference is that he owns this labor.
The work of his own hands for his own belly, 
for his own children’s bellies. We eat because he works. 

This is the legacy of his grandmother, my great-granny.
Ollie Mae Harris and her untouchable flower garden.
Just like her hats, her flowerbeds sprouted something special,
plants and colors the neighbors could only dream of.
He was young when he learned that this beauty is built on work,
the cows and the factories in their stomachs, 
the fertilizer they spewed out—
the stink that brought such fragrance. What you call waste,
I call power. What you call work I make beautiful again.

In his garden, even problems become energy, beauty—
my father has ended many work days in the backyard, 
worries of the firehouse dropping like grain, my father wrist-deep
in soil. I am convinced the earth speaks back to him 
as he feeds it—it is a conversational labor, gardening.
The seeds tell him what they will be, the soil tells seeds how to grow,
my father speaks sun and water into the earth,
we hear him, each harvest, his heartbeat sweet, like fruit. 

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