mid July

It is one of those hot and sticky type of days one gets along the river in mid July.  This morning there was dew on the grass, and a foggy haze promised heavy humidity for the coming afternoon. 

 

 

On my way to the garden I passed a brown-hooded owlet and a young fawn.  Neither one seemed to notice me.

 

 

The black hollyhocks are showing off, I had originally planted these to use in the dye pot...but have not had the time to try them out.

 

 

It's just as well, they are the star of the show in the garden these days.

 

As I pick a few blueberries for my breakfast, I am thinking about the days when I was young, and would go blueberry picking with my mother in the Pinebarrens.  She would help me tie a small bucket onto my waist so I would have two hands to pick with.  Most of the bushes were taller than I was, and I remember seeing many ripe berries that were far from reach.  Those berries from the pines were some of the best I have ever tasted.  I think about Elizabeth Coleman White, and her blueberry bushes.  I cannot look at a blueberry bush without thinking about her, and the thousands of cuttings that were taken from the pinebarrens to create new varieties of bushes.  I grow 4 bushes.

 

Still musing about the blueberries, I recall hearing a story my mother told me about when she was a visiting nurse. She once went to a home that was built on stilts in the middle of a field of blueberry bushes.  The house was very small, and square, with a porch all around it.  There was no electricity, the refrigerator and the lights were gas powered. There was a small table inside, covered with a table cloth.  In the center of the table, there was a mason jar  acting as a vase with a branch of the blueberry bush in bloom. I remember that story over and over again, and think of the simplicity and beauty that house must have had. I bet they ate lots of good pie.