The News from Kenabeek

The season continues to blossom, a good two weeks early, at least. The farmers took the first cut of hay back in mid-June, and the hayfields are now sprinkled with big round hay bales. Looks like a good crop this year. For some reason the bales, deposited at irregular intervals across the fields, heighten my sense of the three dimensions, giving the fields an almost “magic realisim” look …and they also remind me of the time years ago when my younger grandson, then barely verbal, suggested the cows pushed and pushed to roll them up!

On “the six-mile” (a straight stretch north on highway 65 west) there is a canola field in bloom. There is nothing yellower than canola in bloom! It’s so bright it almost hurts your eyes, and even on rainy days it looks like the sun’s shining there.

Here the peonies are over but the honeysuckle continues to bloom profusely. The wildflowers (along the roads and in my wildflower gardens) are full of yarrow, buttercups, trefoil, daisies, and lupin. Even the first fireweed is blooming, which doesn’t usually happen until August. The first poppies are blooming now, the red ones, with the yellow and gold California poppies still to come, and the black-eyed susans are just coming into bloom.

Most importantly, there are blueberries! Only a few barely ripe but lots more to come. Should be a bumper crop this year, and I hope to get enough sugarplums and pincherries to make jelly from them. Thanks to a rainy stretch the last week (which will help make the berries bigger and juicier), I’ve actually cleaned the house, so I will can concentrate on berries and the gardens will a clear conscience.