Peaked summer; piqued for autumn!

Tomorrow, weather permitting, is pick up day for this week’s Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] share. The forecast hints at the possibility of severe thunderstorms. That could mean downed trees across country roads and this old codger doesn’t intend to hack his way in or out of the way to the farm. That said, here’s what we get this week:

• CANTALOUPE
• BROCCOLI
• CUCUMBER
• SUMMER SQUASH, and
• SAVOY CABBAGE

The Better Half has, once again, gone above and beyond, finding creative ways to serve vegetables to make them more palatable and less boring. (You’re right! I’m what Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) turns into when he gets older. He never does grow up.) I find the similarities among cucumbers, zucchini, and summer squash quite distressing, lots of water, little flavor. On the other hand, the occasional watermelon, and, come autumn, acorn squash, is delicious. Broccoli in cheese sauce is okay too. Summer has peaked and left me looking forward to cooler temperatures as well as the return of soup and stew season.

female ruby-throated hummingbird

Photo by J. Harrington

I’m not sure but I believe we’re seeing this year’s hummingbird hatchlings showing up at the feeders. At least the one I saw earlier today looked smaller than any we’ve seen so far this season. I continue to have a hard time getting my head around something the size of a hummingbird flying as far as they do. Soon they males will begin their 2,000 mile trip south to their wintering grounds, followed later by females and young. Meanwhile, the American goldfinches are busy nesting and lining their nests with thistle down. Different strokes for different folks.

Summer Story

by Mary Oliver

When the hummingbird
sinks its face
into the trumpet vine,
into the funnels

of the blossoms
and the tongue
leaps out
and throbs,

I am scorched
to realize once again
how many small, available things
are in this world

that aren’t
pieces of gold
or power-------
that nobody owns

or could but even
for a hillside of money-----
that just float
in the world,

or drift over the fields,
or into the gardens,
and into the tents of the vines,
and now here I am

spending my time,
as the saying goes,
watching until the watching turns into feeling,
so that I feel I am myself

a small bird with a terrible hunger,
with a thin beak probing and dipping
and a heart that races so fast

it is only a heart beat ahead of breaking------
and I am the hunger and the assuagement,
and also I am the leaves and the blossoms,
and, like them, I am full of delight, and shaking.

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