Pollination. Frazzle. Solstice.

Travel

25 Jun

Just before the Summer Solstice I feel control slipping. I’m a bit panicky. The heat and light lengthen, head toward a peak, the buzzing and burbling of insects and birds and frogs turns chaotic, the kids get out from school, there’s more traffic, routines are disrupted. The drive of seeding and potting and planting in the garden gets out of hand. (There are 300 tomato plants! Where will they go?) I’m not ready to surrender to summer.

But I do. And it is a pleasure — one of feet in flip flops, butterhead lettuce salads daily, iced coffee, first strawberries, roses frothing over the porch.

I love the build up of spring. It’s so productive. But now it is time to spill over and enjoy the results. There is still much to nurture and build but now pollination is underway and best left to the experts— myriad insects, birds — and nature spirits? Vegetable plants like a little routine maintenance — watering, weeding — growth is actually stimulated by movement, touch, even sound waves. But many times I’ve found a little neglect, some letting go, works best.

At this point bare soil should be disappearing under the shade of leafy growth so there’s less watering and weeding needed. I leave the zucchini plants a few days and their leaves become beach umbrellas. Their gold-throated blossoms unfurl in the morning, east-oriented and open, swallowing sun. By afternoon they close, sometimes trapping their pollinators. So be careful to harvest in the morning. Take only the male flowers — those with skinny stems and no fruit forming behind them.

Dredge them in a thin batter of flour, water, salt and fry in very hot oil. Salt again and eat them with something cold and bubbly to drink.

We are open to pollination at this time of the year. All the floating inspiration, communication, new pathways. The frazzled feeling, the release of the reins, while disconcerting, opens us to chaos, to the new. It goes all the better if we can relax, open in the right direction, toward the sun, and draw in what we need to set seed for the next cycle.