picking a July photo

Every year I post one photo from the flower fields on Facebook. I'm not a super dedicated poster on social media, but since I love reading what friends are up to these days, I feel I ought to contribute and since flowers are such a big part of my summer work (and spring work and winter escapism), I pick one photo and send it flying. (It's actually funny how few of my Ocean readers are on Facebook and how few Facebook friends are Ocean readers!)

Knowing that there is to be that one and one only picture to be shared in this way sets the pressure cooker cooking within me! Because the question is -- which one?? Last year I put up a photo of the Big Bed in mid July and then a week later I kicked myself because everything looked so much better then! 

Of course, it's not as if 1. anyone cares, 2. anyone actually looks carefully at the details I find to be so important and finally, most people read their Facebook stuff on their smart phones. Do you know how tiny a flower field picture will be on someone's mini-iPhone?? Minuscule dots rather than lush lilies! 

Still, as in all these things, I fuss about this and worry that it isn't as good as it could be. I'm not a super perfectionist, but I have seeds of that in me: I always think I could do better. 

Since I know I have entered that week of Great Beauty, when the flowers are about as awesome as can be, I set out this morning with my camera and bucket (425 lilies clipped) and I keep an eye out for that best possible image. Should it be one of the ones from today's post? And by the way, there's some pressure, too, to get this done quickly. I have been uneasy about the growing number of grasshoppers in the garden. Small herds aren't too bad, but when the weather turns hot and dry, which of course describes our summer, they multiply and they can decimate a flower field. [Ed suggests we should catch them, sauté them in olive oil with a toss of garlic and eat them. I told him -- give me a jar and I'll catch them. You fry them and most importantly, you eat them.]

So, let's walk and snip together, pausing occasionally by those blooms that make my heart flutter!

(Secret path leading to the back door...)

(The lily field by the porch: nymphs and shepherds are blooming! -- that's a reference to past years of such blooms and the pastoral song it calls forth in my head. Tall, orange and ruby, to the right.)

(More of nymphs and shepherds, this time photographed in the bright afternoon light...)

(Looking now toward the Big Bed, with a cat. Which one? Friendly One or Friendly Two...)

(Bold Beatrice venturing through the Big Bed...)

(The Big Bed...)

(From another angle...)

(And another...)

(I should not have favorites... And yet...  The way that one color blends into the next here is just exquisite!) )

(And another...)

(No, annuals, I am not forgetting you. Yes, you carry the color for us through spring, summer and fall.)

So -- which photo do you think I should have picked to give the best single image of the farmette flower fields?

Okay, yes, there is July life outside flower gazing. There's breakfast, for example. With sweet peas from the garden.

And in the afternoon, I make use of Aggie's blueberries (she is an asparagus and blueberry farmer -- a super combination, don't you think?) and bake our favorite these days -- a blueberry and thyme loaf.

And then Ed and I head out to our small local market. It's a Thursday affair and Ed always goes and I hardly ever go because on most Thursdays, Snowdrop is with me. But she is not here today and so I keep the big guy company. As usual, he does his egg-cheese exchange as Farmer John's daughter looks on with that typical young adolescent skepticism...)

... and his black walnut bread purchase and, too, I convince him that we really really could use a bouquet of local flowers.

None of this is excessive even though we did come by motorbike. I can fill a sack and swing it at the side as we ride. However, I still need to pick up our CSA veggies for the week. Is it going to be one of those rides, where flowers are held protectively with a stiffened arm, and blueberries are kept on the lap precariously, and the veggies are somehow fit snuggly in the rear basket along with the cheese and breads?

It is.

As we ride back home on this very warm and beautiful summer afternoon, I let myself drift back to our various market encounters -- with Farmer John, with farmer Aggie, with farmer Natalie. And the black walnut guy and the flower woman whom I'd never met before. These encounters with familiar people and with new people -- these are, for the most part, still missing in our post-Covid world. We see friends, we see family, but we dont have many casual encounters with others these days. Weird how you can be hungry for that form of human contact. 

The refrigerator is full. The flowers are blooming outside, and inside too. How good is that!

With love...

 

is this the day?

When is the peak, the high tide, the day that marks the very best moment of my flower fields? It's a tough call, because no two years are alike and I can't tell for sure where this is all heading. We could still be climbing or we could have hit the tippy top. Then, too, if a strong rain hits us, we could have chaos in the fields. Still, judging by the look of things, by the weather report, and by my spent lily pickings (415 this morning), I'm guessing that it is somewhere between now and the end of next week.

The best of the best, finest, the most colorful. Impressionistic, passionate, sublime. 

It's not that the past months weren't beautiful or that the next ones wont bring something special to the farmette, it's just that when I plant stuff, indeed when I purchase baby flowers, I imagine them as they will appear this week, when most (though by no mean all ) lilies are in bloom.

So it is no surprise that today, I focus on the fields all morning long. Not only do I snip and tidy, I also water much of what's there. (It has been a terribly dry season.) In all -- it's a four hour effort to get most of the fields to their best possible presentation. 

I have photos of course, but I'm keeping it tame for now. You have to show restraint or else it just becomes one undifferentiated mass of color. Nothing wrong with that, but if you want to really take in the small beautiful details, you cant blind yourself or the Ocean reader with excessive photos every single day of the  high season.

Okay, here's what I especially loved from today:

(Is there a better set of hues for a flower?)

(The oldest and densest lily bed is really filling up...)

(How about these incredible blossoms? Stunning!)

(From the porch, looking out...)

(From one corner of the Big Bed)

(From another corner of the Big Bed)

(Blushing beauties, all in one bunch...)

Breakfast, well after the noon hour.

Toward evening I head up to my daughter's home. The two older kids are away still, but Sandpiper is around. While my girl and I visit, he entertains us with his grins and games.

(At the water table)

(Playing ball: at age one, I'd say he's pretty good at it!)

My daughter was telling me about a new habit she has: along with a few friends, she records the sweetest moments of the day -- ones where you really pause and take note of something particularly beautiful. A moment when you savor something exquisite. What an incredibly clever idea! She read me some that have been recorded and I have to say, I was mesmerized by them! It's as if I was there, seeing that child's gesture in a raspberry patch, feeling the utter perfection of a passing breeze. Maybe there was a scent of honeysuckle, or merely of dry grass. Or maybe it was inside the house, when a piece of music caused you to do a small dance or transported you to another time and place that you'd not thought about for a long time. Precious fragments of a day! They tend to slip by often unnoticed. Unless you make a point of noticing them.

With love...

nothing but flowers

I wake up, step out and think -- who needs words when you have flowers. Who needs breakfast when you have flowers. Who needs pickle ball when you have flowers. You get the point: growing flowers serves many purposes and doing so can feed your soul and calm your raging bull and also, at the end of the day, fill the pages of a blogpost.

It's fair that this should be the content now. My days aren't merely filled with flower care, but much of what is good in them resides in the flower fields. 

[Other stuff? I have been tracking various people's Covid infections -- how delightful, right? And I have been ruminating about how difficult it is to be a funny person when you aren't genetically predisposed to be a funny person. A humorous gene, you'll tell me, does not exist. The talent to entice laughter is shaped socially. Go ahead and debate that if you wish, all I know is that there are some people -- admittedly not very many -- who can knock your socks off with their clever twist of a story that leads you to chortle right out loud and I am not one of them. But I can, on this July day, get you to smile! Not with words, but photos. Of flowers. Here we go!]

(By our back door, which, for us, is the only door...)

 

(From there, I take the secret path...)

(Along that path: an unusual lily, with two varieties joined as one...)

(And now for the lily field in front of the porch... Remember: each lily lasts only one day...)

(There are tiers of flowers: the lilies are at the top)

(Viewed from the side...)

(Okay, now let's follow the path toward the barn... hey, Uni, are you cleaning Happy's feather's? You are! You don't have to do this you know! In the background: a corner of the Big Bed)

(Wait, let's backtrack a little and show at least a tiny edge of the bed I hardly ever photograph: the one facing the road. This bit is all yellow and white...)

(And how about the field to the west of the porch? It's very shady these days and yet the monardas and lilies and cone flowers persevere...)

(Okay, back to the Big Bed...)

(This is where I put in the holly hock... waiting for it to blossom upwards... )

(A digression from a distant bed: out of the many experimental seeds I put in, there was this bean that grew to be taller than the branches of the crab apple...)

(Turn around and look across the Big Bed to the farmhouse...)

(Just one beautiful clump, out of many...)

(Finally, breakfast. Alone: Ed is out of town. A rare thing indeed.)

(If ever I'm going to butcher these hens, Bold Beatrice will be the first to go. She follows me everywhere if I stray toward the barn, the tomato field, the lavender patch. I trip over her all the time. She wants corn. Pesky and bold! But with a sweet side... Sigh...)

(One last one: the meadow in the new orchard. wild and beautiful...)

And there you have it! A day of nothing but flowers.

And love...

flowers

They waited for me, my dear, dear lilies. Most of them will have their field days this week and even into next week. This then is the moment for flowers. Glorious and beautiful, rich with the colors of summer. Expect Ocean to devote most of its time and space to them. It's just the way it is. (Besides, the grandkids -- all mostly healthy at this point -- are ensconced in family trips and programs, so that I keep them on my radar screen and I track their movements, but from afar.

Oh, hemerocallis lilies, you are magnificent (and especially when growing next to the phloxes, monardas, lilium, and clematis, because communities of flowers are like communities of people -- enriched by the presence of those not entirely like the other)!

I step out early and immediately I start in on the garden clean up. I'm not in peak season yet, but with my absence, the spent flowers have hung limply on the stalks and I quickly snip them off because it really, really looks better that way. Total amount snipped? 691. 

It's a stunning day, with plenty of sunshine and the morning is pretty as can be!

And here's a strange but pleasantly so surprise -- in the morning, the swallows are back. Did they forget something? Did they feel the air to be too warm and so they came north again? Are these distant relatives of the ones who were here before? A mystery! 

Breakfast, yes of course. On the porch, with the delicious fruits of the season -- peaches and blueberries.

Some more work, and tidying, of Ed too! (Meaning I trim his gorgeous gray hair and shave off his beard.) And then I ask him if he wants to tag along to Eugster's Farm with me. They're just under ten miles from our farmette and they have the first crop of corn for sale. Having tasted this year's corn in Chicago, I'm hungry for more and our guys just down the road aren't ready to harvest yet. 

It's not hard to convince me to hop on his motorbike with him. I mean, on a warm day, on rural roads -- it's just a heavenly ride. With views!

At Eugster's we are tempted!

Yes, by the corn. But also by their sunflower bunches. And watermelon. This is when you begin to regret taking a motorbike. Can we fit it? We have to! However, on the trip home we take a tiny detour to check out the Ortega family's small greenhouse. They sell flowers and we're curious what they're growing. And of course, I cannot resist picking up just a couple of pots, including one of a very very tall and unwieldy hollyhock. My seeds did not take this year, possibly because the cheepers were scratching in the place I put them.  This one would be just perfect for the Big Bed. 

Now how on earth am I going to manage this on the motorbike?

I do, but Ed is forced to go very slowly and by the end of the short ride, my arms are stiff!

So I plant and I transplant and I move some plants and the day passes very quickly!

(Cookie break: with cookies from Chicago's bakery -- a very sweet memory for me...)

Ed tells me -- it's a beautiful place we live in, isn't it...

Indeed it is.