Solstice

Something about the solstice intrigues me, feels like something that should be celebrated, and so I had made plans, important plans mind you, to piddle in my garden last evening and then sit on the porch and drink in those last long rays of the longest day of the year.

Instead, I came down with this awful summer cold complete with aches and chills. I caught the fading rays of the day through my window as I sat wrapped in a blanket watching "American Pickers" on Netflix. Not the celebration I had planned. Sometimes I think life is made up of the"insteads".

But summer proceeds with or without me. The garden is starting to produce the warm weather vegetables now: squash, beans, zukes. I even had a salad the other day that included our romaine and our first grape tomatoes. I think this is the first year I have ever had both ready at the same time. Usually the lettuces are gone long before the tomatoes come in. For sure the romaine won't hang on much longer in these ninety degree days.

The peaches that the late frost and hail storm spared were stolen by a marauding squirrel. I caught him in the very act. He also boldly visits our front porch every day looking for a way into the squirrel-proof bird feeder. The varmint stands his ground until I am within a couple of feet of him, and I have to follow him off the porch to get him to leave. Very cheeky. I had to buy peaches this year.

The pullets are growing and the layers are laying, or most of them are. We have eight layers currently and are getting about six eggs a day. I have never been any good at discovering the slackers. Heidi, the duck, has decided she is a chicken and lays her pretty blue-green eggs in the nest boxes with the others.

Goat babies are imminent. Bea is as wide as she is tall. It has to be soon. Next week probably.

The katydids are already clacking away in the trees. Really early for them. During the day, haze hangs over the mountains nearly hiding those farthest away, muting and smearing the colors in the nearer ones.

Last night just after dark, which came around 9:30, I pulled myself off the couch and stuck my head out to listen to the night sounds for just a moment. There in the dark the crickets chirped, the toads trilled and the tree frogs sang their summer song. The longest day of the year had passed.