Category: Summer

Where is the Party?

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photo by Tomomi Gibson

The sun is rich
And gladly pays
In golden hours,
Silver days,

And long green weeks
That never end.
School’s out.
The time Is ours to spend.

There’s Little League,
Hopscotch, the creek,
And, after supper,
Hide-and-seek.

The live-long light
Is like a dream,
and freckles come
Like flies to cream.
~John Updike “June” from A Poem For Every Night Of The Year

(I wrote this 15 years ago on July 6 and have updated it with an addendum)

I remember childhood summers as 3 months of full-out celebration– long lazy days stretching into nights that didn’t seem to really darken until 11 PM and bright birdsong mornings starting out at 4:30 AM. Not only were there the brief family vacations at the beach or to visit cousins, but there was the Fourth of July, Daily Vacation Bible School, the county fair, family reunions, and of course and most importantly, my July birthday. Yes, there were mundane chores to be done, a garden to tend, a barn to clean, berries to pick, a lawn to mow and all that stuff, but my memories of summer are mostly about fluff and frolic.

So where are the summer parties now? Who is out there celebrating without me? Nothing seems to be spontaneous as it was when I was a child. Instead, most grown-ups have to go to work most days in the summer.

I’m finding myself in the midst of my 55th summer and I have to create celebrations if they are going to happen in my life. Without that perspective, the bird song at 4:30 AM can feel more irritant than blessing and the long days often mean I fall asleep nodding over a book at 9 PM. I want to treasure every, every minute of this precious time yet they flow through my fingers like so much water, faster and faster.

I realize there will be very few “family” summers left as I watch my children grow into adults and spread their wings. They will be on to new adventures in future summers. So each family ritual and experience together takes on special meaning and needs to be appreciated and remembered.

So….for this summer my family has crammed as much in as we can in celebration of the season:

We just spent some time in the hayfields bringing in the bales with friends–our little crew of seven–sweating and itchy and exhausted, but the sight and smell of several hundred hay bales, grown on our own land, harvested without being rained on and piled in the barn is sweet indeed. Weekly we are out on the softball field in church league, yelling encouragement and high-fiving each other, hooting at the good hits and the bad, the great catches and the near misses, and getting dirty and sprained, and as happy to lose as to win. We had a wonderful July 4 barbeque with good friends culminating in the fireworks show on our farm’s hill overlooking miles of valley around us, appreciating everyone else’s backyard displays as well as our own.

We are now able to sing hymns in church in four part harmony, and last night our children helped lead the singing last night in an evening “campfire church” for over fifty fellow worshipers on our hill. In a couple weeks, we’ll take to the beach for three days of playing in the sand, roasting hot dogs. reading good books, and playing board games. We’ll try to make the trek down to Seattle by train to spend the day watching the Mariners play (and likely lose).

One change after seventeen years of hosting a display of our horses at the Lynden Fair: due to “off the farm” work and school schedules, we can’t muster the necessary round-the-clock crew of being there for our little part of small town agricultural pursuits.

Yet the real party happens right here every day in small ways without any special planning. It doesn’t require money or special food or traveling beyond our own soil. It is the smiles and good laughs we share together, and the hugs for kids taller than I am. It’s adult conversations with the new adults in our family–no longer adolescents.

It’s finding delight in fresh cherries from our own trees, currants and berries from our own bushes, greens from the garden, flowers for the table from the yard.

It is the Haflingers in the field that come right up to us to enjoy rubs and scratches and follow us like puppies. It is babysitting for neighborhood toddlers who remind us of the old days of having small children, and who give us a glimpse of future grandparenthood. It is good friends coming from far away to ride our horses and learn farm skills.

It is an early morning walk in the woods or a late evening stroll over the hills. It is daily contact with aging parents who no longer hear well or feel well but nevertheless share of themselves in the ways they are able. It is the awesome power of an evening sunset filled with hope and the calming promise of a new day somewhere else in this world of ours.

Some days may not look or feel like there’s a summer party happening, but that is only because I haven’t searched hard enough. The party is here, sparklers and all, even if only in my own mind.

Addendum:
Fifteen years have passed since this was written and I’m glad I can look back and be reminded how full of life those family summers were. We seldom have the full-meal-deal of everyone together at one time, and since our parents have passed on to eternal summers in heaven, we have now the blessings of six grandchildren. Freckles abound!

We still can make a party happen, if only in our own minds.

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A Lesson Learned Young

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I have a brief confession
that I would like to make.
If I don’t get it off my chest
I’m sure my heart will break.

I didn’t do my reading.
I watched TV instead—
while munching cookies, cakes, and chips
and cinnamon raisin bread.

I didn’t wash the dishes.
I didn’t clean the mess.
Now there are roaches eating crumbs—
a million, more or less.

I didn’t turn the TV off.
I didn’t shut the light.
Just think of all the energy
I wasted through the night.

I feel so very guilty.
I did a lousy job.
I hope my students don’t find out
that I am such a slob.
~Bruce Lansky “Confession”

Summertime visits to our cousin Joe’s farm were always greatly anticipated.  We would be allowed several days of freedom exploring the fields and barns, playing hide and seek, reading comic books and Mad Magazines that we never had at our own house.

In addition, we got to play with Joe’s cap guns. These noisy little pistols had the ability to make a pop from the roll of “caps” inserted inside. They seemed far more authentic than any of the squirt guns we played with at home.

But I was a girl. I got tired of the cowboy or war shooting games quickly. There is only so much popping you can do and it just isn’t that fun any more. I was bored with my brother playing with the guns endlessly so one day I simply put an end to it by pocketing the last roll of caps in my jacket, thinking I’d slip them back into Joe’s bedroom the next day before we left for home.

It wasn’t until we were home several days later that I was reminded in the middle of breakfast about the roll of caps when my mother came out of the laundry room dangling the coil of dots up for me to see.

“What are these doing in your jacket pocket?”  she asked. 
I swallowed my cheerios down hard, nearly choking.

“Guess they belong to Joe.”   I said, not meeting her gaze.

“He gave them to you?”

“Um, not exactly.”

“You took them?”

“Guess so.”

“Does he know you have them?”

“Not exactly.”  I started to cry.  I didn’t even want the stupid things, had no way to use them and didn’t even like them. But I took them. In fact, I stole them.

She put the roll on the kitchen table in front of me, set a big envelope and a piece of paper and a pencil down in front of me and told me to write an apology to my cousin Joe, as well as my aunt and uncle.  The note would be wrapped around the roll of caps and mailed to them that day.

I was mortified at being caught with ill-gotten gains. How could I confess this thing I did? How would I ever make it right with my cousin? How would he ever trust me again, and how would my aunt and uncle ever allow me to come visit again?

I wrote each word slowly and painfully, the note paper oozing the guilt I felt.

“Joe, I’m sorry that I took your roll of caps without asking you. I put them in my pocket where they didn’t belong and forgot about them. But that was wrong. I have never taken anything that wasn’t mine before and I never will again. I’m very very sorry.”

My mother read it, nodded, sealed up the envelope with the roll of caps inside, put on stamps and we walked out to the mailbox together to mail it.  My stomach hurt and I didn’t think I’d feel okay ever again.

Three days later, my aunt wrote me back:

“Thank you for returning Joe’s caps. Sometimes we must learn hard lessons about doing the right thing. Joe accepts your apology and has learned from your example. He’s relieved he didn’t lose them as he has to earn the money to pay for them with his allowance. We’re looking forward to your next visit! Much love to you.”

Instantly I felt much better. I now understood the relief of apology and the healing of confession.

But most of all, I’ve never forgotten the sweetness of forgiveness.

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God’s Dust

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…war spreading,
families dying,
the world in danger,
I walk the rocky hillside,
sowing clover…
~Wendell Berry “February 2, 1968”

However you may come, 
You’ll see it suddenly
Lie open to the light
Amid the woods: a farm
Little enough to see
Or call across—cornfield,
Hayfield, and pasture, clear
As if remembered, dreamed
And yearned for long ago,
Neat as a blossom now
With all the pastures mowed
And the dew fresh upon it,
Bird music all around.
That is the vision, seen
As on a Sabbath walk:
The possibility
Of human life whose terms
Are Heaven’s and this earth’s.

The land must have its Sabbath
Or take it when we starve.
The ground is mellow now,
Friable and porous: rich.
Mid-August is the time
To sow this field in clover
And grass, to cut for hay
Two years, pasture a while,
And then return to corn.

This way you come to know
That something moves in time
That time does not contain.
For by this timely work
You keep yourself alive
As you came into time,
And as you’ll leave: God’s dust,
God’s breath, a little Light.
~Wendell Berry from The Farm

These are fragrant acres where
Evening comes long hours late
And the still unmoving air
Cools the fevered hands of Fate.

Meadows where the afternoon
Hangs suspended in a flower
And the moments of our doom
Drift upon a weightless hour.

And we who thought that surely night
Would bring us triumph or defeat
Only find that stars are white
Clover at our naked feet.
~Tennessee Williams “Clover”

Farming is daily work outside of the constraints of time –
labor done this day is caring for what is eternal,
despite weather, war, uncertainty.

There is a timelessness about summer:
the preparing and planting and preserving,
a cycle of living and dying repeating through generations.

We, like our farming forebears, will become God’s dust again.

I’m reminded, walking through our pasture’s clover,
I become seed and soil for the next generation.
Like a blossom so plain and unnoticed during its life,
I enfolds myself back to the ground, sighing and dying.

Perhaps it is the breath of clover
we should remember at the last,
as God’s own breath.

Inhale deeply of Him in the dust of the clover field.

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We Look Behind From Where We Came…

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And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game…
~Joni Mitchell “The Circle Game”

those lovely horses,
that galloped me,
moving the world,
piston push and pull,
into the past—dream to
where? there, when
the clouds swayed by
then trees, as a tire
swing swung 
me under—rope groan.
now, the brass beam,
holds my bent face,
calliope cadence—O
where have I been?
~Rick Maxson “Carousel at Seventy”

On thin golden poles
gliding up, sliding down,
a kingdom of horses
goes spinning around.

Jumper, Brown Beauty,
Dark Thunder, Sir Snow,
a medley of ponies
parade in a row.

Settled in saddles,
their riders hold on
to reins of soft leather
while circling along

on chestnut or charcoal,
on sleek Arctic white,
on silver they gallop
in place day and night.

Such spinning is magic,
(to dream as you sail)
with lavender saddle
and ebony tail,

whirling to music
in moonlight, spellbound,
galloping, galloping,
merrily go round.
~Rebecca Kai Dotlich “Carousel”

Under its canopy, in the shade it casts,
turns a world with painted horses,
all from a land that lingers a while
before it disappears.
Some, it’s true, are harnessed to a wagon,
but all have valor in their eyes.
A fierce red lion leaps among them,
and here comes ’round a snow-white elephant.

Even a stag appears, straight from the forest,
except for the saddle he wears, and,
buckled on it, a small boy in blue.

And a boy in white rides the lion,
gripping it with small clenched hands,
while the lion flashes teeth and tongue.

And here comes ’round a snow-white elephant.

And riding past on charging horses come girls,
bright-eyed, almost too old now for this children’s play.
With the horses rising under them,
they are looking up and off to what awaits.
~Rainer Maria Rilke from “Jardin de Luxembourg”

A few July memories:

Sixty-five years ago, I was a five year old having her first ride on the historic carousel at Woodland Park Zoo before we moved from Stanwood to Olympia.
Fifty-four years ago — a teenager working in a nursing home as a nurses’ aide after three days of training.
Forty-nine years ago – returned home early from my studies in Tanzania after four chimpanzee researcher friends were held hostage for ransom and eventually released
Forty-three years ago — deep in the guts of a hospital working forty hour long shifts, thinking about the man I was soon to marry
Thirty-four years ago — my husband and I picking up bales of hay in our own farm field, two young children in tow after accepting a new position doctoring at the local university
Twenty-seven years ago — raising three children and completed farm house remodel, supporting three parents with health issues, raising Haflinger horses, helping design a new clinic building at work, playing piano and teaching Sunday School at church
Twenty-whatever years ago – life spinning faster, blurring with work at home, on the farm, at clinic, at church. I begin writing to grab and hang on to what I can.
Sixteen years ago — one son about to move to Japan to teach and the other son to teach at Pine Ridge in South Dakota, daughter at home with a new driver’s license working with migrant children, a mother slowly bidding goodbye to life at a local care center, farming less about horse raising and more about gardening, maintaining and preserving.
Ten years ago — two sons married, daughter working as a camp counselor so our first summer without children at home. Perfect time to raise a new puppy!
Five years ago – A two year old granddaughter and two new grandsons! Daughter teaching, engaged to be married.
Two years ago – completed forty-two years of non-stop doctoring so I bid it goodbye.
Now – Three more grandsons! Two retired grandparents! Big garden on the farm but we’re slowing down.

The puppy’s face and our hair are turning white…

O where have I been?
We can only look behind from where we came and await what is ahead.

The decades pass, round and round – there is comfort knowing that through the ups and downs of daily life, we still hang on. If we slip and fall, there is Someone ready to catch us.

Looking behind you, where have you been? What awaits you where you are heading?

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At Summer’s Pace

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Light and wind are running
over the headed grass
as though the hill had 
melted and now flowed.
~Wendell Berry “June Wind” from New Collected Poems

Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death

It dies in the white hours
Of young-leafed June
With chestnut flowers,
With hedges snowlike strewn,

White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne’s lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer’s pace.
~Philip Larkin “Cut Grass” from The Complete Poems

June is the month when grass grows abundantly.

Light and wind work magic on a field of flowing tall grass. The blades of the mower lay it to the ground in green streams that course up and down the slopes. It lies orderly in stoneless cemetery rows.

Farmer’s fields are lined with rows of mown grass, a precious commodity to be harvested for the livestock to eat the rest of the year. Some of the green is bagged up like big marshmallows for easy storage and some put in silos for later in the winter.

The grass’ death is critical to the life of the animals we raise.

What was once waving and bowing to the wind is cut and crushed:
no longer bending but bent,
no longer flowing but flown,
no longer growing but mown.

At summer’s pace, while the clouds saunter overhead, the grasses are stored as fodder for the beasts of the farm on those cold nights when the wind beats at the doors.

It will melt in their mouths. As we watch them chew, we’ll remember the overflowing abundance of summer in June.

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Making Daisies

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…perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.
It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun;
and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.
It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike;
it may be that God makes every daisy separately,
but has never got tired of making them.
~G.K. Chesterton from Orthodoxy

Over  the shoulders and slopes of the dune  
I saw the white daisies go down to the sea,  
A host in the sunshine, an army in June,  
The people God sends us to set our hearts free.  
~Bliss William Carman from “Daisies”

As I get older, my daily routine can seem mundane and repetitive to the point of being boring. When our grown children call us to see how we’re doing, I don’t have much new to report (which is just fine with me). It must seem like we’re in a rut. I’m tempted to make stuff up, just to make my day sound more interesting…

Yet, I’ve discovered, if I don’t keep to a steadfast routine, I truly flounder in an unpredictable wilderness of my own making. The sun rises every morning, even if I’m not awake to witness it. It sets every evening without my standing on the hill to watch it go down.

But there is something very comforting about making an effort to be there, my eyes open, treasuring the passage of another day.

Surely God celebrates the predictability of His design and enjoys repetition, whether it is another sunrise or sunset or the reappearance every June of an infinite number of identical daisies?

He remains consistent, persistent and insistent. We need His steadfast reliability to lead us out of our personal chaotic wilderness.

Do it again, God.  Please — please do it again.

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Rending the Heavens

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Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you!
As when fire sets twigs ablaze
and causes water to boil…
~Isaiah 64:1-2

I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which 
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.
-Wendell Berry “To My Mother” from Entries

It was a summer morning six years ago, beginning much like this one: something woke me early at 4:45 AM.  

Perhaps it was the orange glow bathing my face through the curtains. Never one to miss a light show, I heeded the call and got up and dressed.

Once outside, I was amazed to see storm clouds boiling –  shifting and swirling in unrest as if something or someone may emerge momentarily.

No trumpets though.
The music in the air was the usual early morning bird song,
and sherbet-orange leaves normalized to green.

Within a minute, the heavens settled. Unentangled from my dismay, so did I.

Yet for a moment that morning, I did wonder what might become of us all. That thought still occurs to me each morning, as I realize how much merciful grace embodies the heavens above.

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A Joy To Simply Be…

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Each year, on the same date, the summer solstice comes.
Consummate light: we plan for it,
the day we tell ourselves
that time is very long indeed, nearly infinite.
And in our reading and writing, preference is given
to the celebratory, the ecstatic.

What follows the light is what precedes it:
the moment of balance, of dark equivalence.

But tonight we sit in the garden in our canvas chairs
so late into the evening –
why should we look either forward or backwards?
Why should we be forced to remember:
it is in our blood, this knowledge.
Shortness of the days; darkness, coldness of winter.
It is in our blood and bones; it is in our history.
It takes a genius to forget these things.
~Louise Glück from “Solstice”

When summer time has come, and all
The world is in the magic thrall
Of perfumed airs that lull each sense
To fits of drowsy indolence;

Just for the joy of being there
And drinking in the summer air,
The summer sounds, and summer sights,
That set a restless mind to rights
When grief and pain and raging doubt
Of men and creeds have worn it out;

O time of rapture! time of song!
How swiftly glide thy days along
Adown the current of the years,
Above the rocks of grief and tears!
‘Tis wealth enough of joy for me
In summer time to simply be.
~Paul Laurence Dunbar from “Summertime”

Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy.
These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience.
~C.S. Lewis from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

On this solstice day, I am wavering in a balance
of light and shadow~
this knowledge of what’s to come next
rests deep in my bones.

I’ve been here before,
so grateful for the sun’s return.

I will not forget this gift of Light,
as darkness begins to claim the days again.

I remember,
He promised to never let darkness
overwhelm the world again.

I believe Him,
on this longest day,
and even more so,
in the midst of the longest night.

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Roads Go Ever Ever On

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Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on,
Under cloud and under star.
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen,
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green,
And trees and hills they long have known.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone.
Let others follow, if they can!
Let them a journey new begin.
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

Still ’round the corner there may wait
A new road or secret gate;
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.
~J.R.R. Tolkien “Bilbo’s Walking Song”

It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off too.
~J.R.R. Tolkien – Bilbo to Frodo in Fellowship of the Rings


I love these roads in June, at dawn or dusk,
the light and shadow playing over the path,
promising summer songs and simple joys.

When I walk these roads,
I try to avoid the deep ditches,
the potholes and speed bumps.

It’s a dangerous business,
walking out the front door,
not knowing where I may be swept off to.

Passing by secret gates and overgrown paths,
I take the familiar route that leads me home,
waiting for a Guide so I don’t lose my way.

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Best of Barnstorming Photos – Summer/Fall 2023

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To my regular readers and occasional visitors:

Thank you for visiting and sharing this page often, with hearts open to the ever-changing times and cycling of the seasons.

Your encouragement and your financial support to keep this page ad-free pushes me to keep looking for beauty in words and images to share with you each day.

Here’s to this year handing off the hours, weeks, and months to the next, one full of blessings yet to be discovered…

New Year’s Eve sunrise – 12/31/23

Previous collections of “Best of Barnstorming” photos:

Winter/Spring 2023

Summer/Fall 2022

Winter/Spring 2022

Summer/Fall 2021

Winter/Spring 2021

Summer/Fall 2020

Winter/Spring 2020

Summer/Fall 2019

Winter/Spring 2019

Summer/Fall 2018

Winter/Spring 2018

Summer/Fall 2017

Winter/Spring 2017

Summer/Fall 2016

Winter/Spring 2016

Summer/Fall 2015

Winter/Spring 2015

Summer/Fall 2014

Winter/Spring 2014

Best of 2013

Seasons on the Farm:

BriarCroft in Summer, in Autumn, in Winter, 
at Year’s End

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