Summer is in full swing, which means most evenings we eat outside. Tonight we’ll watch and wait for the June full moon, the
strawberry moon, which just happens to fall on the summer solstice, a rare
occurrence. Mark and I talked about the northernmost sunrise this morning and
how the sun will now head back south along the rim of the mountains until its about-face in mid December.
The garden is up and hitting its stride. The peas will be
blooming soon. I've stymied the cabbage moths by putting mesh around the cabbage plants and thinned the kale, a new/old favorite I planted for the first time this spring.
We’ve been enjoying bird traffic around the house, bobbing goldfinches, regal cedar waxwings in pairs, and the occasional flash of an oriole.
We don’t cotton to bird feeders, but provide currants, serviceberries and
chokecherry bushes for au naturel dining.
Anna is spending the summer with us, weighing fall
employment options and taking some much needed downtime to reflect on her college
career and dive into ranch work. She’s been Mark’s right-hand cowboy all
spring. We lost her horse, Mater, last fall so she’s been riding 21-year-old
Birdie, who’s as light and lively and high-strung as ever. Birdie and I don’t
exactly mesh, but easygoing Anna is getting along well with her.
The cattle walked their way to the high country and are
happily settled in a sea of grass. Oh, how Mark and I love grass. So much so that at a restaurant for dinner yesterday, on the terrace on a perfect evening, we
raised our glasses; "to grass!” I said.
It was written eloquently about grass in the late 1800’s: “Grass is the forgiveness of nature, her constant benediction.” I’ve memorized
the words from the 1948 Yearbook of Agriculture, a large green tome entitled, Grass,
which Mark’s grandpa gave me 25 years ago. An essay by Kansas senator, John James Ingalls, extols the “enduring blessings” of grass which captures my
love for this, a most inconspicuous but essential family of plants. Grass moderates
soil temperatures, diminishes floods and droughts, feeds life in the soil,
sinks carbon, and through the gut of an herbivore, provides nutrients to the
food chain long past its short green season.
It is this last function, the joining of cow and grass, that is the principle job of a rancher and that which we take
most joy in.
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| Anna on Birdie |
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| Kate working the flank |
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| it was a long walk |
