Early this morning I had this thought that stayed with me for a good
portion of the day: I have a special place in my in my heart for summer.
I give it more value, because when I was a kid, summer was my special piece of heaven. The school year had nothing compared to the
warmth, love, and joy of being in my grandmother's village home. Summers in postwar Poland were different than summers for American
kids. Here, the average kid goes to camp and does summer programs. (Or these days stays home and plays computer games.) Fun stuff, to be
sure, but for many Polish kids of my generation, summer always came with a special kind of freedom: a
freedom to play out on a meadow, to take forest walks, watch minnows dart in a pond, pick mushrooms after a rain, pluck sour cherries from your neighbor's yard. You
went to your grandparents' or aunts and uncles -- places in villages,
maybe in the mountains, maybe near lakes and streams. And there was
music. We listened to and sang songs about summer, most often around a campfire. Sure, pop music may
have had elements of pining for love, but it was rich with the poetry of
the season. Here's one of my favorites from that time:
Konie zielone przebiegły galopem
i spod ich kopyt wytrysnęły kwiaty,
żaby w sadzawce rozpaliły ogień,
na niebie księżyc pozapalał gwiazdy.
Nad brzegiem stawu wsłuchany w krzyk czajek,
owiany nocną wonią tataraku
patrzyłeś w gwiazdy na samym dnie stawu,
mówiłeś do mnie, że przemija lato.
Lato pachnące miętą,
lato koloru malin,
lato zielonych lasów,
lato kukułek i czajek.
What?? You don't speak Polish?? Fine, here's a (mediocre) Google translation:
Green horses (grasshoppers) galloped past
and flowers burst forth from under their hooves,
frogs lit a fire in the pond,
the moon ignited the stars in the sky.
On the shore of the pond, listening to the cries of lapwings,
wrapped in the nightly scent of calamus,
you gazed at the stars at the very bottom of the pond,
you told me that summer was passing.
Summer scented with mint,
summer the color of raspberries,
summer of green forests,
summer of cuckoos and lapwings.
Do you recognize the poetry in those images? To this day, summer for me is about plucking raspberries and hearing birdsong, on repeat, every morning. Summer becomes synonymous with nature's bounty, swaddled in my memories in my grandmother's love.
To be fair, we have summer songs in this country as well. I searched the internet for the more popular ones. Here's one by Selena Gomez:
The heat is blazing like the 4th of July
I got the air con on, and it's blasted on high
So just grab something cool and jump in your ride
Pick up everybody, I'll be waiting outside.
Different imagery, right? From my childhood, I do remember this one by Chad & Jeremy. It's a little gentler...
Trees swaying in the summer breeze
Showing off their silver leaves
As we walked by
Soft kisses on a summer's day
Laughing all our cares away
Just you and I
Sweet sleepy warmth of summer nights
Gazing at the distant lights
In the starry sky
They say that all good things must end someday
Autumn leaves must fall...
And it puts me in the thick of a summer romance, but it does not a whole lot to evoke summer sensibilities, swaying trees and starry skies notwithstanding. Besides, Chad and Jeremy were British, not American.
Another beautiful summer day in the making here, at the farmette: and yes, it starts with the lily clean up.
(not all yellows were created equal)
(frilly!)
(no, I do not play favorites! still...)
(I hope you're having a productive day!)
(okay, let me give these glads some time in the spotlight)
(and not all purple phloxes were created equal...)
(yes, the musical trumpets!)
(Big Bed)
(hidden in there -- the venerable farmhouse...)
(with breakfast on the porch)
(with this guy... and yes, we like the fan on these hot mornings)
The mosquitoes are receding (somewhat) as is the lily count: 652 today. Entirely reasonable! Still, I have to say, sometime in late June, while I was galavanting among puffins in Iceland, the weeds in the flower beds won the battle and by now, I have to admit -- they probably won the war. I still do pull out the big ones as I push through the flower fields. By far, the most widespread is Clearweed (so named for its translucent stem) and in this I am lucky since it has to be the easiest weed on the planet to pull out. But I haven't removed even a quarter of this invader. It lurks, it proliferates. I keep a handle on the creeping bellflower, and the creeping charlie, and even the common dooryard violets that spread by the thousands in spring. But there are two weeds that are both horrors and delights. Let me tell you about them:
I'm thinking of the Asiatic dayflower and wild petunias. (Notice how all my weeds are blue!). They are both remarkable and deplorable. Desired and hated. And they love love love my gardens.
The Asiatic dayflower has a characteristic that is all too familiar: it sprouts a pretty (blue) flower, but only for a day. Here's an example, though at the end of the day, the flower is rather puny:
It inspires love: that little flower is a lovely shade of blue.
It inspires fury. Here's a quote from a gardener: "I finally have a name for this little beast. I called it Hitler-weed
because it invaded everything around it. I'll be pulling this until the
day I die. Once established just try to get rid of it. I dare you."
And here's the thing about gardening: you really should grow plants (and control plants) with others in mind. I've read that gardeners' and farmers' use of glyphosate (a common weed killer, aka Roundup) has lead to the proliferation of this dayflower because it survives in places where glyphosate has killed other weeds. If you choose to leave this "weed" alone, or horror of horrors, if you actually want to cultivate it for its medicinal properties (to quote one source: "it is used in parts of Asia to treat throat infections, fevers, and as a diuretic. It also contains antibacterial compounds" ), a neighboring gardener or farmer will not thank you for it.
The second Weed of Great Ambivalence is the Wild Petunia. This one (again, with the somewhat faded flower):
Many do not consider it to be a weed at all, but what else would you call a plant that refuses to give up growing where you do not want it to grow, obliterating all in its path? And the bummer of it is that it cannot be pulled out easily. Use a spade or else don't bother. The plant has the last laugh: it snaps off its root base and comes back with its lovely blue tongue stuck out at you days later.
Honestly, I've sort of given up on this year's nuisances. I know that they are there (and the bed by the sheep shed is one huge mess), but I choose to ignore many of them. Yes, I'll clean up the edges so that you, my sweet visitor, cannot see them and sometimes I'll plunge (I did that this afternoon) and pilfer what is in my path, but I cannot achieve the depth of purity I had this spring. And that's okay. My friend from Australia, who passed away this winter, said something to me that stays close to my heart (I'm paraphrasing here): you don't want a garden that is weed free. You want to leave a lot of wild spaces. To reflect what nature gives us. To reflect who you are.
With so much love...
