One Glorious Morning In Summer
One glorious morning in summer, I was making my way out the back door when something ripe and delicious tickled my nostrils. Apricots! We had two huge apricot trees, and it was picking time.
Out past the fence the assembly line from trees to jams and pies was already underway. Dad was out picking, and Mom was in the kitchen canning and preserving for the year ahead from morning ‘til night. I came around to get a handful to eat and a bucket to take in to the kitchen. I ran back out, past the rows of corn and tomatoes growing tall in the summer sun, out to smell the
divine apricots waiting at the end of the fence.
About fifty years later, I walked out back into my garden to the fragrance of ripe oranges, apricots, nasturtiums, and tomatoes. When I came outside, my nostrils were filled with the scents of the garden, roses, plums, peaches, and zucchini. I ran my hand along an orange, picked it and peeled it right there in the garden, and had it with my toast and tea. I picked some blueberries growing there and added them to my yogurt. In the corner of the garden, beneath an orange tree, the sitting area was my breakfast destination. From there the scents of summer squashes and sweet alyssum and marigolds filled the air.
There were three things I did in the garden, and summer afforded the opportunity: pick the fruit, smell the roses, and curl up in the seating area with a good book. The fruit looked good, and I gathered some to put on the dining table or in the kitchen. The thing about smelling roses was that you had to get quite close to them. As you did so, their beauty overwhelmed and their fragrance made you fall in love. But curling up with a good book, now that’s another thing entirely. I could spend hours reading in the garden. The soft summer breeze cooled my brow, and the warmth of the sun reminded me how much I love summer.
What’s a cup of tea and an orange without someone to share them with? My husband joined me in the seating area in the shade beneath the orange tree, and we breakfasted together, talked of the world and the news and the book I was reading. After awhile he turned to his reading and somewhere along the way, he napped. And when the sun grew too warm, we walked back into the house, our senses delighted, filled with memories that will last a lifetime.
What do you know about reading a good book? It needs a subject you care about most passionately. It needs time to simmer on the back burner between reads. It needs to make you pause and consider what is so and what is not. It needs to engage your imagination fully. It needs to walk you through some pathways you have not seen before.
So when I was reading in the corner of the garden under the shade of the orange tree, I looked out over the garden from time to time, considering the words I was reading. The roses caught my eye, their ineffable beauty pervaded my being. Or I contemplated the vegetable beds, noting which species of bees were pollinating the tomato plants. And I read some more of the book that so intrigued me.
This glorious summer morning was one of many. Abundance reigned in the garden. An abundance of sensual delights. An abundance of love. An abundance of that which fills the soul.
It had been this way when I was growing up. The summer apricots filled me with joy, abundance. And when I curled up with a good book, with oranges, with the fragrance of growing things in a corner of my summer garden, with my husband beside me, there was such abundance!
