Summer Bounty 2000


Lammas

A traditional European summer celebration


Corn: Our Native Grain

Corn was the staple food of North America


Green Corn Festival

Celebrated by the Seneca Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy


Succotash

A recipe for a Native American dish


Mayapple Jam

A recipe for a forest floor fruit with a tropical taste


Billowy clouds sail,

bees buzz, leaves quiver, sun warms,

the grass cradles me.

by Linda Pascatore - Summer Bounty 1999


Silky gold tassel

Hints of sweet milky jewels

Wrapped in a green cloak.

by Linda Pascatore - Summer Bounty1998


The Phase Named Bounty

We have divided the year into eight phases, based on the Solstices, the Equinoxes and the midpoints of the four seasons (see Solar Phases below). We are now in the phase of Bounty, which begins on August 7th, which is midway between the Summer Solstice and the Autumnal Equinox. The period ends on the Equinox, September 23rd.

We are in the heart of summer (see the article on Lammas for a description of some traditional summer celebrations). Many wild foods are available at this time. Blackberries are just ripening. All kinds of berry leaves can be picked and dried for tea. Berry leaf tea is especially good for cramps and female problems. The fruit of the may apple can be harvested to make May Apple Jam (see recipe this issue).

Wild flowers abound. Joe Pye Weed, with large mauve colored blossoms, can be found in fields and roadsides. Later this period we will see purple New York Asters and white Heath Asters in meadows and ditches, as well as sneeze-inducing goldenrod. You can pop open jewel-weed flowers, also called touch-me-not. Small white pearly everlasting flowers can be dried and used in flower arrangements. The red sumac fruit is brightening the landscape. By September butterflies, hummingbirds and dragonflies will head south. Presque Isle State Park near Erie is a great spot to catch the Monarch Butterfly migration. They rest there after their flight over Lake Erie.

There is a full moon on August 7th, the first day of this period. We call it Corn Silk moon, because of the ripening corn. Check out our article on the Green Corn Festival. The next full moon is the harvest moon on September 6th. The light of the full harvest moon was used by farmers to extend the workday to bring in the crops.

 


I Bring Fresh Showers for the Thirsting Flowers

from The Cloud

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

 I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,

As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under,

And then again I dissolve it in rain,

And laugh as I pass in thunder.

 

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

And the nursling of the Sky;

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain when with never a stain

The pavilion of Heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams

Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.


The Current

by Wendell Berry

 

Having once put his hand into the ground,

seeding there what he hopes will outlast him,

a man has made a marriage with his place,

and if he leaves it his flesh will ache to go back.

His hand has given up its birdlife in the air.

It has reached into the dark like a root

and begun to wake, quick and mortal, in timelessness,

a flickering sap coursing upward into his head

so that he sees the old tribespeople bend

in the sun, digging with sticks, the forest opening

to receive their hills of corn, squash, and beans,

their lodges and graves, and closing again.

He is made their descendant, what they left

in the earth rising into him like a seasonal juice.

And he sees the bearers of his own blood arriving,

the forest burrowing into the earth as they come,

their hands gathering the stones up into walls,

and relaxing, the stones crawling back into the ground,

to lie still under the black wheels of machines.

The current flowing to him through the earth

flows past him, and he sees one descended from him,

a young man who has reached into the ground,

his hand held in the dark as by a hand.


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