Housatonic — With the Summer Solstice just over the next small rise, it’s easy to be up before the dawn, to be about in the soft pre-sunlight hour. These misty mornings are perfect and complete in themselves, time standing still. They are fleeting, like all pleasures, and are too rare not to savor. But they’re also perfect to tend to some small quiet chores or to inspect in the cool calm some small accomplishments around the yard gardens.
It’s a fine time to see that the corn is up five or six inches as filled in loyally along all lengths of the four rows I plant for myself each May: the early hybrid with its frugal stalks stands in the first row, Illini extra sweet in the next two rows for fat, slow Midsummer. Finally, Golden Bantam waits in the last row with its subtler, old-fashioned sweetness to take me through the end of the summer.
I once remarked to a friend who had a farmstand that he should plant some rows of Golden Bantam, thus insuring himself of at least my regular patronage throughout the corn season. He just laughed, said no one grew that stuff anymore. I suppose its ears are not quite as easily sweet as the yellow and white stuff, and I concede it’s not as tender to the uninitiated palette. But I like my corn golden and firm of character.
Before last week’s storms, the seeds sulked under the dry hills I’d prepared for them. But on this sweet morning, they’ve popped out and started their climb towards the sun.
Overeager and anxious to get a jump on the season, I planted a couple of my rows way off line so their crooked ranks stagger, loop from left to right and back again like happy, wandering, drunks. Some mote- magnifying, blue-nose might sniff at my crooked rows, but corn planted with geometric precision brings nothing to the plate which less-disciplined kernels can offer.
Come the dog days, I’ll be waiting with water boiling to shuck some ears before sprinting to the kitchen with them just in time for supper.
That time’s weeks off yet. But even though summer’s not arrived on the calendar, much of the years promise has already been fulfilled.
On the lawn, just three feet from the infant corn, stalky dandelions stand grizzled as grandfathers, their time in the sun past, their purpose accomplished.
The grape hyacinths’ first purple lies tumbledown, brown as any oak in October. That’s the way of things. And if I hold up my end of the bargain with hoe and cultivator, the corn will find its way as well.
