So do the deer.
I really do wish they’d stop eating ours, at least until the blooming’s over.
Tag: Summer
Lookin’ lush
Here’s a progress report on our raised, fenced-in garden experiment this year. So far, we’ve had no further problem with the deer, although they’ve been daily visitors to the back yard and neighbors lately, especially as small apples have been falling from the gone-wild trees.
The picture shows tomato plants thriving as they’re finally blossoming in our mostly cool climate, along with basil, calendula, cucumbers, and peppers.
The adjoining bed has been producing romaine lettuce, Swiss chard, parsley, and sugar-snap peas, while the leeks are coming long royally.
You’d think those birds would be far more ravenous in the depths of winter
We continue to keep our bird feeders out through the summer (something we wouldn’t do if we had bears in town), but I am surprised by how much more they eat in summertime, when there’s plenty of other food available, than they do in deep cold and snowy conditions when they need more to keep their metabolism up.
Yeah, we know there are more of them now and that they’re also feeding their babies. But on some days they eat as much as they would otherwise consume in two weeks – or more.
On the other hand, we do enjoy watching the variety and drama as they dine right outside the window at our kitchen table throughout the year.
Full moon rising into clouds
This is how the rising moon looked from across our street last night. The reflection is in the bay between us and Campobello Island in New Brunswick, Canada. Some of those lights on the island are moving traffic.
Mount Jefferson
In New Hampshire’s White Mountains Presidential Range as seen from the Vermont state line.
Dipping in glorious waters
I haven’t written a real poem
in at last a decade
prose, especially fiction, has taken the fore
plus relocating to a remote Maine island
do I even consider the photography
How else do you think
other than by talking to yourself even silently
or through the fingers or feet
I’ve long preferred instrumental music, abstract
or airs in languages I don’t understand
and usually forget the lyrics and lines in scores
I’ve sung in concert
So I was swimming a half-mile a day
before the pandemic but haven’t been back
in deep water, fresh or surf, indoor or out till today,
my first venture in a little-known river pooling
too rocky for laps but perfect for extending myself
in the familiar chill under a cloud-strewn afternoon sky
yes, it’s glorious and refreshing
in a way I discovered my first year after college
in hippie abandon or the New England coast
and Dover’s Olympic pool later
it’s the sunlight and breeze
stretching above, around
a call to attend to my rooting as well
in meditation, prayer, Scripture, favored poets
all as seemingly impractical
Sloop at the pier
The Prinses Mia had been sailed across the Atlantic by one man.
Does anything celebrate summer more than a watermelon?
And here I was about to investigate all kinds of melons, starting with cantaloupe.
That said, just consider:
- A watermelon is one of the few foods to be classified as both a fruit and a vegetable. Wish I could count it twice on my daily dietary requirements but guess that would be cheating.
- It’s a relative of both pumpkins and cucumbers.
- It’s far and away the most popular melon in America.
- There are more than 1,200 varieties, but the seedless hybrids are the only ones you’ll likely find nowadays at the market, at least in the USA.
- Those seedless versions aren’t genetically modified. Technically, they’re simply sterile with white seeds that are perfectly safe to eat.
- Watermelons originate in Africa and have been cultivated in Egypt for 5,000 years. That’s why they really do need a long stretch of summer.
- Based on weight, watermelon is the most consumed fruit in America.
- It’s 92 percent water yet rich in vitamins and contains only six percent sugar. By the way, there’s no bad fat or cholesterol.
- Its flesh isn’t always red – orange, green, yellow, or white are other options.
- In Japan they’re grown in glass boxes to maintain the unnatural cubed shape.
Schooner style
Roseway in port
That record flooding gets personal
Looking at the news of Vermont’s flood damage, I’m seeing places I know and have traveled. Towns I pass through on my way to and from Quaker Yearly Meeting sessions at Castleton University, for instance, all now heavily hit. I wonder about some of the covered bridges I anticipate visiting or places I stop for a stretch, too.
I’ve been waiting to hear from a dear friend, especially, though I know his home is high above the stream running through town. Still …
My wife and I retain strong impressions from seeing the devastation from Hurricane Irene nine or ten months after it delivered its wallop. You wouldn’t believe the extent unless you saw the evidence.
The mountains become a funnel for the falling water, and many of the roads have nowhere to go but beside the streams. People, of course, live along the roads … many of them at the foot of natural chutes from the hillsides.
It’s not just water, either, but the boulders and gravel it unleashes.
There are real stories that will unfold long after the TV cameras and breaking news headlines have moved elsewhere.
But it does make a difference when events do somehow seem to reflect home for you. Or when you look for what I think of as “slow news.”
Jnana's Red Barn 