Summer of Sound

It’s been a symphony of hoots & harmonies for residents of the Row this summer. First there’s happy hour at our watering hole in Little Town, where we’re treated to the region’s most exceptional fiddle, gee-tar, bass & sax every Friday. One Friday, my friends Gail and Laurie and I got to sing with the boys in the band, surprising our friend Ina on her birthday with a Libby Roderick song, “Bones,” she’d asked us to learn many months before. The surprised, delighted look on her face when we started singing was priceless.

Then, over the 4^th, we got to hear Stevie Winwood and Santana in the park in South City, and last weekend we heard Marcia Ball, Trombone Shorty, Davina & the Vagabonds, and Los Lobos at the park in North City.

Then we got to hear Ray play drums with a super-group of area musicians – drums, 3 fiddles, 3 guitar players, and 2 bass players – at a fundraiser for the Honor Flights for WWII vets (http://www.honorflightsd.org).

Add to that the usual “Help! Help!” calls of peacocks competing for mates, the honking of peahens whose eggs are hatching, and the soft woodblock cluck-clucking of hens teaching chicks to find food. Throw in the backporch mewing of the Row’s newest resident cat Rickie Lee, the songs of orioles, pigeons, swallows & sparrows, and the rhythm section – bullfrogs, crickets, cicadas. It’s a regular summer soundfest.

The summer storms have added to the orchestration, too, like the sustained heaving thunder during last night’s storm. We got 3-5” of rain out of it, adding to the already extremely wet spring & summer that drowned many newly-planted corn and bean fields (and tragically, many farmers' hopes for the season). The result at the Row has been positively tropical greenery. We’ve been harvesting gooseberries, yellow squash and cucumbers. The peas ate the raspberries as fast as they set on, so a fence is in order there (their little peabrains don’t realize peacocks could fly over fences). The trees are heavy with wild plums and apples, and if I was inclined to pick & sort lambsquarters (which taste like spinach and have equal nutritional value), we’d be iron-fortified for the rest of the summer.

The peacount is around 24 now, which includes the summer’s 8 new babies. We’re pretty sure we had a badger in the pasture, which would explain the low baby count (at least 4 hens went to nest x 4 babies each, and you can see the potential) and the lateness of some babies – 4 brand new ones showed up in the yard just yesterday, quite late in the summer for new chicks that need a good start before winter. But peas who lose eggs or chicks early in the summer will breed again and try to get another clutch in before fall. O, the will to perpetuate...

We made our first batch of wine this summer, Merlot, and we’re starting our second batch tonight, Chilean Malbec. These are kits, an easy start to winemaking as I learn the ropes in preparation for homemade wild plum wine.I've dubbed our production "Naughty Girl Whinery," though I rarely whine and am most certainly never naughty.

So it’s been a peaceful, musical, delightful summer at the Row so far. Now, if I could just get someone to pay me to stay home and garden, make wine, knit, blog and host small gatherings of family & friends, life would be absolutely perfect.