The dog days of summer...the powder of the road on my
windshield like flour on a kneading board; glittering dewy mornings that give
way to glaring sultry high noon’s that languish into indolent shimmering
afternoons that fade into deep purpled evenings; thirsty baking earth and warm
rain falling in tempestuous summer cataracts; raspberries hanging like black
jewels in the cloisters of their drooping vines; patches of vibrant lilac
thistle blooms humming and swaying to the songs of a hundred bees; gradient tan
lines creeping up our arms, sun-highlights in our hair; brown noses and
freckles.
I have found the secret to enjoying work on these days is to
move slowly...with the languid sway of the corn leaves and the heavy drooping
of the tree limbs. Stand in a little dell of the forest and you can hear
a zephyr whispering through the boughs as the shade cools it until it reaches
you like a fresh draft that has crept through the chinks of heat. Sleepy are
the livid greens in the woods and sleepy are the shimmering waves of heat
hovering over the dusty road. Lilting are the bird's songs, more
brilliant than the greatest diva’s aria, trilling and swaying with lowering
branch, whistling high enough to wake anything but a recumbent summer day.
Wonder of wonders that this drowsy world should yield such abundance of life as
we reap from its folds. Midsummer, casting forth the splendor of first
fruits, is a queen at her coronation. A little over a week ago, the crops
were ravaged in a storm full of hail and yet they flourish and blossom
voraciously in answer to sun and rain. 
It took a while, but we finally cleaned and aired all the
clothing and bedding from the last reenactment. Things come in smelling fresh
and sunny and dewy when they hang in the open air...nothing like the sterilized
tang of detergent and drier sheets. Some raspberries became concentrated
“gem-juice” in the form of jam under Aubrey’s skilled hands last week.
Our quota of bread for market has reached its summer apex of over a hundred
loaves and graces the market stand in plentiful heaps of savory and
sweet. The pigs delve away into nooks and crannies in the sheltering
caves of the woods and make the echoes ring with grunts of satisfaction and
squeals of rivalry. Cabbages bulge from their frosty green cradles
while we make plans for coleslaw and cabbage soup and sour kraut.
Last night we were sauntering at an easy mid-summer pace up
the evening road that glows in waning golden light when Daddy called a halt and
told us to listen...and smell. The wind tasted of that ripe sweetness
that thrills the heart of a farmer with satisfaction and exaltation...and our
ears caught the grumble of a tractor navigating those billows of loam on the other
side of our valley..."Someone is cutting hay," ...his knowing smile
echoed on our own faces.
“Some neighboring farmer,
compliant with ageless necessity, cut off his rich emerald crop and laid it in
windrows on the shorn earth for the sun to turn to gold. Wherever I am when I taste
that ripe sweetness of mown alfalfa in the wind, I come home in my heart. Here
to the daily sameness and constant change, the relentless energy, the lasting
rest, the old familiar and new every sunrise little taste of heaven.”
I wrote that last year during the last hay-cutting of
summer. This cutting is one of the first. I knew and loved the
thought and aroma of hay cutting then just as I do now...and yet not
quite. The shifting of time pours familiarity and longing into all loves
that are at once ever-fresh and ever-ripening. So has our heavenly
Father ordained the ebbing and flowing tide of His creation.
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