We should enjoy summer, flower by flower, as if it were to be the last one we will see. - Andre Gide
The water shot from the nozzle of the hose on the August evening and I was a kid with a water cannon. The sunlight was blazing hot coming around the corner of the house between the sweetgum tree and the Japanese maple. I was sure it was going to make a weird sunburn shape on my bare leg that resembled Salvador Dali's melted pocket watches in his 1930s painting The Persistence of Memory. I jitterbugged to keep the mosquitos from dining on my ankles, but gave up when an evening stroller passed. The neighbors or strangers on my street can be a judgemental lot. Itchy red welts were as guaranteed as anything that Sears had sold under the Craftsman brand.
I watered hydrangeas, gardenias, nelly holly, zinnias, mums, daisies, roses, lilies, lavender, peonies, a camellia, pampas grass, begonias, some trees and the lawn. If it needed water, and most everything did, then I doused it.
This was August being August when summer is supposed to be winding down, but sometimes flares up into a hot spell. These late summer heatwaves are as hollow as the wolf huffing and puffing outside the door. Summer can bully, but it always succumbs to autumn's triumph. The sunsets are sooner and the sunrises later as the sun has less time for its mischief. Hopefully by late October the frost will come to deliver the knock out punch.
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| The wayward downpours of July. |
I loved and hated the summer of 2024. July was the worst and it always is. The sun was too strong and even the wind went on vacation that month. The rain spigot was shut off in June and remained so until the last two weeks of July. I watched the rain get lost time after time as it approached our side of
the hill. It charged at us head on in a tease to only turn and climb
another hill. The odds were not in our favor. Two weeks of storms in late July became no rain in August and the first half of September. The ground ached.
July 14th was the hottest day of the summer. The misery climaxed at 101 degrees.
The beginning and the ending of summer are the best parts with the rewards of new beginnings from the sprouts and the conclusions concentrated in the blooms. I cannot tell if I am writing about the life cycle of a season or of humans - they are so similar after all.
There were failures in the garden this year. What is a garden without
some brown spotted leaves, bugs gnawing and the blooms that never were?
The gladiolas grew, stalled and died. The poppies never sprouted. Two
beds of wildflowers were eaten by wildlife. The hydrangeas bloomed early
then lost their will to bloom again and instead wilted through the heat.
The hummingbirds have migrated as of last week, the wild rabbit that has lived here since spring has hopped onward, the deer are foraging more in the nearby woods and the hours of light are much shorter. Summer has ended and the drought lingers. It is time to plant bulbs for next spring, the clock of the garden never stops.
These were some of the successes grown here after the spring show of tulips and irises.
Summer goes with a wave, a turn on its heel and the understanding that it will reincarnate itself next year.
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