The Daily: 5 July 2023

I have a complicated relationship with the 4th of July, or maybe with July period because I’m just not a summer person, but especially the 4th. I don’t feel any particular urge to celebrate the war that began this country. I’m a committed pacifist and do not honor violence. I don’t even like military music. All that shallow pomp, simplistic marching rhythms, and loud brass. I hate noise for the sake of noise. So I also don’t understand the attraction of fireworks either, especially these days. Don’t we have enough of fire and smoke to be going on with? But I’ve lived most of my life out west where fireworks are disastrous, from manufacturing to selling to detonating them down in the arroyos and setting off bosque fires that take out whole neighborhoods. So I’m not one to go seeking out 4th of July celebrations.

However, the 4th marks a turning point in summer in this culture, more so than the nebulous solstice, though I think much of what goes into a 4th of July festival is actually older tradition that migrated from the third week of June to the first week of July. Even the fireworks, I suppose. These are remnants of the solstice bonfires and strange fire games like rolling a wheel of fire down a hill or running through the fields and streets carrying torches. I doubt I would have liked those games either, nor do I think they would be welcome anywhere in these fire-prone days. But parades and music and eating street foods and fresh garden produce — those are all things I love. The 4th is a great time for that sort of thing. It is also the start of the summer festival season in New Mexico. (I haven’t figured out the calendar rhythms here in Vermont yet).

The Santa Fe Opera opens by the last weekend in June. BioPark music and Jazz at the Albuquerque Art Museum begin around the end of June as well. The weekend closest to the 4th sees the Santa Fe International Folk Art Festival and the Los Golondrinas Wine Festival. And following that, there are things to do almost every week until October. It’s one long celebration of food, art, music and conviviality, and it’s mostly free for New Mexicans, or at least inexpensive. (Excepting the opera… because…) So there are good reasons to look forward to July in New Mexico.

I also have reasons to look forward to July here. This is when the garden has finally shifted into production. Planting is put on hold until late in August, and even the weeding is not as incessant a chore now that the plants I’d like to see grow are large, leafed out, and shading the soil. And there are things to eat! There are berries every day, from strawberries to raspberries to finally, my favorites, the blueberries, as well as numerous other smaller fruits like juneberries, gooseberries, currants, elder and all the viburnum berries. There are apples on the trees, small and green, but promising fruit into winter. The zucchini, cucumbers and other summer cucurbits all bloom at the beginning of the month and are fruiting heavily by the end, and both flowers and fruits are good eating. There are carrots and beets, and sometime toward the end of the month the garlic and potatoes turn brown and flop over, letting you know it’s time to dig for treasure. And the best of July are the flowers — orange calendula and daylilies, yellow St John’s wort, red geraniums, white and gold daisies, herb flowers in blues and purples, and roses of every color.

And that is probably why I feel like the 4th is a turning point. This is when, for lack of a better term, the energy shifts. From spring and beginnings and planting to autumn and winding down and harvest. In my home, the colors, scents and textures are richer. My mantle has starfish, gold candles and a bouquet of dried thistle. There are gold and red and turquoise fabrics on most surfaces. I mixed up a scent oil with lavender, cedar, and something called ‘ocean’ which has notes of salt and warm sand and seaweed (beach without the grit and rotting fish). And of course, there is the aroma of putting up the garden produce, mixed with the tangy smells of my daily bread and weekly milk ferments.

Another subtle but perceptible shift that happens around the 4th is that the solstice ends. I record sunrise and sunset times in my weather journal so that I know how many hours of sunlight the garden can get out of a day. By now, the sun is setting just a bit earlier each day, and sunrises are palpably later, about the same time as at the end of May. The days are getting shorter, the energy is contracting, the spiral is turning inward. It’s only a few weeks until Lughnasadh! It will be hot for that entire time, I know, but I also know that the cool misty mornings of August are not far off. From this side of the 4th, I can almost smell the roasting chiles and baled hay and, just barely, the pumpkin and damp leaves underfoot.

I savor the inward curve of the annual spiral. This is the time of year that invigorates even as I feel more need for introspection and focusing on the small and personal — my home, my family, my garden, my books. I just finished reading A Very Small Farm by William Paul Winchester, an account of another ardent solitary homebody and his daily doings. Winchester is far more adept than I am, building his home, barn and outbuildings as well as a productive orchard, garden, apiary and grain fields. He may make more of a fetish of self-sufficiency than I do, but there’s no denying it works for him. Because of this, his book is frequently compared to Thoreau, but I think A Very Small Farm fits more within the traditions of recordings made by monks and farmers and weather watchers throughout the world. There are recipes and grafting tips, descriptions of construction and materials, suggestions on breeds of veg and flowers and bees, and many selections from his daily weather observations to convey the shape and texture of his year. Thoreau might have waxed rhapsodic about the pleasures of a simple life, but he was hardly competent at living that life. Winchester shows that it can be done, maybe by any sufficiently motivated human. This is a good book to read in the contracting half of the year. It is a quiet book, a perfect inauguration into high summer and the beginning of harvest.

I am also reading Full Moon Feast by Jessica Prentice, but there will be more on that later this week. This too is a good book for this time of year since Prentice paints a vivid picture of a world that does not actually include independence. As you can imagine, this resonates with me.

But for now, I have a basket of raspberries that need tending. Don’t know if these will be frozen for later or just eaten fresh out of the bowl. Maybe with bread and yoghurt. And then there are garlic scapes and beet greens to go with fresh pasta. And maybe a bouquet of lavender and daisies to snip from the garden. So… I shall stop writing now…

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©Elizabeth Anker 2023