The freshness of spring is gone, summer has come. The wind picks up, smoke from wildfires blows in some days and affects air quality. The black flies come out all at once, followed by mosquitoes. The planting window for annual cut flowers is small in northern Minnesota. Two weekends in late May and early June were packed with planting hundreds of little seedling plugs. Which means gardening round the clock for a bit to keep up with the weekly landscaping schedule. Along with the near constant watering in the nursery the time of hitting the ground running has come at last. I’m not complaining though, it’s worth it once everything is growing and eventually blooming, but a whole lot to do week to week. I’m cutting ranunculus and iceland poppies these days from earlier plantings, and waiting for the peonies to ripen. In the landscaping gardens we are planting too. Annuals go into boxes, the first planting projects of the year are installed; trees, shrubs and flowering plants go into new homes.
I have always found that it gets harder to stay present with the summer season when we get busy. There is so much happening, buzzing, plant growth and blooming, so much life and activity on the wind. The sun is bright, the days are long, and they all start to blur together. It seems like it's easier to be present for the spring and the fall exactly because of their fleetingness. Only when we lose someone we love do we appreciate life all the more. Presence has always been important to me in my relationships to people and to the natural world. But being in the middle of busy summer when you work seasonally has always seemed like being the doldrums. Drifting, until you land in autumn. Seemingly there isn’t as much movement in summer. Or there's simply too much to do to slow down to savor it. I think of memories of childhood in summer when it really seemed to stretch out. Days filled with swimming and evenings of lightning bugs and night games. It felt like it lasted much longer than it actually did.
Maybe presence for the passing seasons helps me feel a little less separate. So I like to try and capture it, make sense of it, make it slow down. Make me slow down. Each month of summer offers a type of mini-season to enjoy. June is appleblossoms, lilacs, azaleas, peonies, poppies.
I think that’s why cut flowers are so delightful. To be able to bring indoors a moment of summer’s sweetness and warmth, it’s progression and passing, to slow down enough to appreciate it at the end of the day or first thing in the morning. To be so excited to go outside first thing in the morning to see what flowers opened overnight. A little moment from the jumble of plant life, animal life and summer activities.
I remember seeing a four generation photograph taken in 1957, when my mother was a baby. Her great grandfather was holding her and her mother and grandmother stood next to them. The old man was 83 at the time, a first generation American born in 1874, his parents both immigrants from Germany. What struck me about the photo was the vase of peonies nearby. My great grandmother brought them in the house and wanted them in the photo, or maybe they just happended to be there. And indeed, their presence seems to ‘dress up’ the whole scene. It was early summer and she was cutting flowers like I do now. Summer after summer, year after year, each generation connected together by the simple act of tending garden beds for the blooms that come and go and accompany us through our life stages. To be in a moment of time, no matter which times you live in.
