Sweet Summer Days
We are smack dab in the middle of my favorite time of year. The weather is warm, but not too warm. Everything is growing and green because we’ve plenty of rain, but not too much. Butterflies, dragonflies, and hummingbirds are making daily visitations. And this is the time of year for fresh fruits and vegetables.
On top of that we’ve had a string of beautiful open-window weather days with a nice breeze, low humidity, and just right temperatures. I LOVE days like this when it is perfectly warm during the daytime and then cools off enough at night so that it feels cozy sleeping under a light blanket—heavenly.
For the past week I’ve been enjoying beautiful, bountiful, juicy, delicious black raspberries grown and picked in my own back yard. I picked about 2 quarts three days in a row, a quart of berries today, and I expect them to continue ripening through the rest of the week, gradually winding down. This is the first year I’ve harvested black raspberries since childhood when we grew them on our farm. Eating them this week has been a delicious mindfulness meditation practice and remembrance of days gone by. I have marveled at the wonderful flavor of each berry as I slowly eat them berry by berry. The delicious flavor of the berries that I remembered from childhood is even better than it was in my memories. Picking the berries is also a mindfulness practice (of a different kind). With their wicked thorns, I need to pay careful attention to exactly how I move the leaves and canes to reach the ripe berries. This morning I made the mistake of picking without putting on a long-sleeve shirt to protect my arms from the thorns. Despite being very careful I came away with a couple of scratches from the thorns. Tomorrow I will remember to wear a long sleeve shirt when I pick.
Freshly picked black raspberries (and 2 blueberries)
I also learned something funny in my raspberry days this week. One of the bowls I took out to pick raspberries got stained with bright purple and red juice from the berries. The stains didn’t come off when I washed the bowl. Then I remembered that when I was a kid, my mom always sent me out to pick black raspberries with a stainless steel cooking pan. At the time I didn’t think anything of it, that’s just the way things were done. But as I began picking my own berry patch I had wondered why my mom always sent me out to pick berries with a pan. I didn’t think the handle of the pan was that much of a benefit and it certainly was heavier than the bowl I was using. When I later saw the stains in the bowl I realized that stainless steel didn’t stain—aha!—that’s probably why she always sent me out to pick with a pan instead of a bowl.
It’s funny the things I wish I could ask my mom about now, but since she passed several years ago, the opportunity is gone. So many things in life are like that. We’re not aware of the preciousness of the present moment and the opportunities to connect when we have those opportunities. Looking back at my years of parenting our two daughters I wish I had been more mindful and appreciative of the moments when I was there. I have so much more appreciation for how quickly the time goes by now than I did then.
Now I Become Myself
Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before—”
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song;
Made so and rooted so by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!— May Sarton
One of the benefits of growing older is that I appreciate so many aspects of life so much more than I did when I was young and I have the patience to stand still and soak in the present moment.
When I first met my husband we spent a lot of time at his mom’s cabin. She and her friends would sit outside in the shade listening to the birds, talking, and enjoying the summer days. At the time I thought sitting around like that all afternoon was so boring. Now I spend lots of time sitting on the swing on our deck soaking in the sounds of the birds, the feel of the breeze on my skin, and the beauty all around and I totally understand what Marie and her friends saw in just sitting outside in the shade.
It’s that time of year when fresh veggies are plentiful at Farmer’s Markets all over the Twin Cities. Yesterday I picked up fresh green beans, sweet peas, cucumbers, and sweet corn. I love the taste of all this fresh food. Today I picked the last of my container garden lettuce. It’s been a wonderful month or more of fresh-picked salads that I will miss.
When I was a child growing up on a farm I never fully appreciated the fresh delicious food that we ate during the growing season and throughout the year as my mom froze and canned enough food to carry us through most of the seasons when fresh food was not available. Now I realize how wonderful fresh local food is and I make it a point to get as much of my summer food at the Farmer’s Market as I can.
The basswood trees are in bloom and everywhere I go in the yard, their subtle sweet scent surprises me. The trees are heavy with flowers. I have never seen them with so many flowers before. My hollyhock flowers have begun blooming and the bee balm is also starting to bloom. It is the lush mid-summer bounty that fills my heart to over-flowing with gratitude for the amazing grace of it all.
Basswood Tree in Bloom
This afternoon I worked out in my flower garden doing some much needed weeding and trimming. It felt good to work up a sweat working in the shade of our old willow tree. The willow tree will soon be gone. We lost a big part of it a year ago in a storm and just last week one of the two remaining trunks fell into the pond. When we investigated, we found that the entire bottom of the trunk had rotted and given way. Now we are waiting for our tree guy to come back with an estimate on what it will take to remove the tree from the pond and the remaining trunk of the tree that is still standing.
Willow in background earlier this summer
This will change our backyard landscape once again. But I am still counting blessings for the years that we enjoyed the wise old willow trees and looking forward to whatever is wanting to unfold next in our yard. It is hard to imagine the space without the trees down by the pond. Our view will be very different.
Change happens in all parts of our lives and things never stay the same. Learning to become more present and aware of the many blessings in my life has enriched me and helped me to be more resilient when unexpected change occurs.
Have you tried counting your blessings lately?
May you walk in beauty.
Fresh-picked lunch ready to fix
Fresh-picked lunch on the plate
Part of the willow tree in springtime
Willow tree last fall — all of this will soon be a memory
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