Queen Anne’s Summer

Queen Anne’s Lace with food coloring

One of our favorite quotes here in the hollow is Henry James’

“Summer afternoon – summer afternoon,

to me those have always been the

two most beautiful words

in the English language.”

This summer I picked Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota), or the wild carrot, from the meadow and put it in food coloring as I’ve always remembered from a school project around 1st or 2nd grade. A gathering of old friends down at Emory College in Glade Springs, Virginia, brought more reminiscences of this practice (everyone seems to remember a similar experience) and I was determined to replicate it.

The colors are lurid and remind me of the wonder of childhood. The flowers last and last and become more vivid with time. Just like all of us if we’re lucky.

Stumbled across a box turtle on my way to pick the Queen Anne’s Lace. The creek is running high with all the rain we’ve had and he looked healthy and happy making his way toward the water.

Box Turtle

Tomatoes are succumbing to foliar wilts, but have harvested some. ‘Gold Rush’ cherry is doing the best, but all the hybrids (‘Better Boy’, ‘Big Boy’, ‘Lemon Boy’) seem to have devolved into basic sweet orange tomatoes (not that I’m complaining). I think I harvested a ‘Mortgage Lifter’ (the tags got mixed up) which was actually red, but this seems to be a disappearing factor in tomatoes.

We are grateful for Summer.

Queen Anne’s Lace