August Bearing

The roses of August are some of the most glorious bloomings of the entire year. This delightfully pink, velvety and cupped little being arrived on our threshold earlier this year as a gift, no name bearing tag or marker in her pot to tell us who she is. Now she nestles in a fertile hollow in the garden behind the little blue house in the village, and she shows her pleasure in the great wide world by sending up leaves and thorns in abundance, these splendid tiny late summer blooms, scarcely more than an inch across. It would be lovely to address her by her true name, but does it really matter what she is called? She is perfect, and a rose by any (other) name is still a rose...

On other fronts, the heat and humidity continue, the late summer business of nurturing our veggie patch through the swelter and into a vigorous harvest. Domestic alchemy is at work, the fine time honored activity of transforming the mundane into the magical, the tasty and the sumptuous. There are vegetables to be blanched and tucked into the freezer, jams and chutneys and pickles to be made for the larder, fruit to be sliced and artfully arranged in the dehydrator, loaves of bread to be pummeled and set to rise, mincemeat to batch up for fruitcakes... a busy time and a happy one too.