High Summer on the Isle
Everything all at once (Part 1)...
I have missed posting the past two weeks…wanting to tell a particular story, which sadly isn’t quite ready yet to be told. Apologies for the Substack Radio Silence, but you will hear about it soon, I promise. In the meantime, stepping back from this particularly all-consuming and ongoing project, I am also riding the summer wave that has engulfed our isle, fulfilling its promise all around us.
The grasses (and weeds) are high, the day lilies are opening up, the trees are lush with foliage, buzzing and crickets all around. The fireflies and horse flies have seemingly disappeared overnight. Compared to last year, which was a disaster, our veggie garden is already producing miracles. Every morning Beau and I start our day with a visit to the garden, like parents looking in on our growing children — no doubt an empty nest coping strategy.
We step through the blue doorframe into the fenced garden, bringing our encouragement (yes, I talk to them), food and water, and like magic, and with the support of this perfect summer weather, they’ve grown into food. Compared to much of the country, we have been having relatively perfect weather, with a balance of sunny days and some rainy ones that the garden (and bugs) love. Amazing.
Last month we enjoyed rhubarb and garlic scapes (our favorite use was chopping the scapes into melted butter and a squeeze of lemon for artichoke dipping) but the past several days we’ve filled our dinner plates with home grown veggies picked fresh for our dinner, with the addition of gorgeous wild chanterelle mushrooms we have foraged for nearby.
The snap peas are climbing trellises taller than I am, the melon vines are sprawling toward the shade of the cornstalks, the favas, green beans, sungold tomatoes and zucchini are ripening and all the other wee plants are growing up and doing their thing. Seeds and plants are so incredibly clever, and truly show off their brilliance in high summer. A marvel to watch them develop on a daily basis.
I love to see the fierce spikes the artichoke plants are developing on their leaves, and how the green beans sprout like tongues sticking out at you from the curly bean flowerheads. My current favorite is the plump purple baby eggplant forming in the lone plant I picked up as a start at a local organic farm stand.
Last year, with ceaseless rain leading to out of control weeds, our shelling bean crop was so poor that the harvest was fully contained in a pint mason jar. Not even enough for a single meal. So this year, when we laid out our new veggie bed, I thought “let’s just plant that jar of beans we grew last year, and try again.” We dug them into the fresh bed with a climbing frame of bamboo sticks, and they are thriving this year, curling up the structure and shading the summer squash. How does a half pint of beans become a lush garden of flowering plants?!
Outside the lives of our precious garden plants, the turning point of the summer was definitely the moment we opened the barn door to the back garden. Last year there were shelves in front of the barn doors opening to the back of the house, not to mention builders digging up the foundations; plus, the barn was dominated by our window restoration project, so barn views were not top of mind. But this year, in preparation for the afore-mentioned Unfinished Project, I suddenly had a vision. It involved unwrapping a sofa we were storing in the barn, and placing it in front of those barn doors — to look out on the view of the peach tree, and the curving stone wall that we spent weeks revealing this spring.
Opening this barn door, for the first time, changed everything.
The beauty of this vista fully changed the experience of the barn, and how we interface with the space in summer. Beau and I now end our afternoons with a sprawl on the sofa, looking out on the view to the peach tree growing just beyond the barn door, a slanted tree which appears to need a crutch to stand up, hummingbirds buzzing around the feeder hanging from its branch.
I’m not sure who planted this peach tree, or how old it is — or how its peaches taste: last year, a late frost dashed any hopes for peaches our first summer here. We had heard from someone who lived in this house a few years before we did that the peaches are amazing — if you can keep them from the local wildlife. “I watched those peaches ripening all summer. And the day they were finally ready to harvest, I checked out the tree and they were ALL. GONE.” Minus an absolutely delicious handful that he salvaged. A greedy raccoon was his best guess.
So while Beau and I observe the tree’s gradual fruiting from our barn sofa, we have been thinking long and hard about how to outsmart our wildlife community, so we can keep the peaches to ourselves! We started by installing a little barn cam to watch the peach tree at night, so we get updates if any of our furry friends are stalking the peaches. We are gradually getting acquainted with our animal community: there’s a skunk (next door they saw the extended family filing around the deck), raccoons, deer, a few feral cats — this winter the “barn cam” even spotted an otter loping around with a gait like a land seal).
The other night, the barn cam alerted us that an adorable family of 3 baby raccoons had stopped by with their mom, sniffing under the tree. Here is the video:
Well they are cute, but not that cute! So to prevent raccoons climbing up the peach tree, we have wrapped a temporary metal collar around the tree trunk as apparently that makes it harder for a raccoon to climb. The tree seems to be tilting increasingly to the side under the weight of the growing peach harvest.
Just when we thought the peach tree defenses were secure, we had a new alert. The branches are so low now, and heavy with fruit, that a deer can reach them! Look how they grabbed the branch and tried to shake it!
Beau has taken more defensive steps with a temporary fence all the way around the perimeter of the tree, held up with sticks!
We shall see if this double line of defenses is enough!
Now, I shall focus my efforts on finishing the Big Unfinished Project, and though I realize that stopping my narrative here leaves you hanging in suspense (will the peaches survive?!), we will be back with PART 2 soon, I promise!
I want to help with the restoration. Will suggest our friends read this story in case they want to join up and help, as well .