A New England Summer
by Ken Mathews




At last! It’s midsummer. I don’t think people from the more mild climates could possibly understand how much those of us who shiver through the frigid depth of winter look forward to and appreciate summertime. That’s obviously not unique to New England and this is not typically the coldest area of the country during winter, but summer’s here are truly beautiful. Winter makes us appreciate summer. As I tell you a few of the things we enjoy, you might need a New England dictionary. Sorry, I haven’t found one yet!

There is something unique to New England that makes summer exciting. Ask any meteorologist in this area. They’ll confirm that it’s frequently very difficult to predict the weather around here with any level of accuracy beyond one to two days. As the northern jet stream and southern jet stream take turns trying to dominate our weather, The Gulf Stream pushes its way up to greet them. The weather is seldom boring. It changes quickly and frequently during the summer.

What’s most amazing is to look at the lush green foliage, beautiful lawns and thriving gardens that were barren lifeless wood skeletons and mountains of ice and snow just a few short months ago. Most of us with a few generations of family heritage in this part of the country love gardens. They are a lot of work, but to a true gardener it doesn’t seem like work at all. This is the beginning of the “pay off” season. By the end of July the tomatoes are starting to “come in”. A ripe, juicy tomato fresh from the garden makes those winter tomatoes from the supermarket taste like paste, wallpaper paste! Last weekend I had one of my favorite sandwiches. It’s a family tradition. We call it a BLT; bread, lettuce and tomato, with a generous amount of mayo (that’s mayonnaise).

Most people don’t grow a garden because of its economic value. In most cases it would be far cheaper to work somewhere all those hours we spend in the garden, then purchase the veggies in the supermarket. That’s not the point. It’s the taste. There’s nothing like home grown veggies picked at the peak of perfection for immediate consumption. Have you ever had sweet corn that was picked and husked while a pan of water was heating up on the stove, then immediately steamed (not boiled) and served as soon as it was cooked? There’s nothing like it in the world! All the corn’s sugar content is locked in before it starts the process of converting sugar to starch.

Although I’m looking forward to August, it’s the beginning of a very busy time for us. That’s when the majority of the tomatoes ripen. We grow over 100 tomato plants and convert bushels of them into spaghetti sauce. In a good year we end up with over 100 freezer bags full of spaghetti sauce to last us through until the next season. We season it with green peppers, onions and garlic, with a dash of a few other spices, then add some scrambled hamburger. Our two sons have grown so accustomed to our homemade spaghetti sauce they don’t like any of the commercially prepared stuff.

Of course, there has to be a balance between vegetables and flowers. I did overdo it a little this year with some young daylilies. They’re taking up several rows of my vegetable garden, where my wife says I should be growing something we can eat. Fortunately, she loves daylilies too, so she almost understands. We have over 1,000 clumps of these summer delights throughout our yard. There’s around 130 different varieties in our collection, so we have some blooming all the time from June through September. I’ve gown so fond of them I started cross breeding them three years ago. Perhaps I’ll come up with a unique and beautiful one someday. Although a couple of my little plants will bloom this year, there’s about 100 that will take one more year before I see their first bloom. The seedlings from this year probably won’t bloom until the summer of 2005, and the crosses I’m doing this year should bloom in 2006. Help! I need more space!

New England has more than its share of coastline. Sometimes the water warms up enough to swim in without turning pink, then blue! The Maine beaches seldom have water temperatures above the low 60’s. There’s no doubt, when it’s close to 100 degrees on a summer day, the water is refreshing, once the tingling and numbness wear off. I never realized you could actually swim in the ocean and enjoy it until I was at Daytona Beach a few years ago. That’s the only negative thing I can say about the northern New England beaches. Everything else about them is awesome, and the coastline is spectacular, especially in summer. There’s the rugged rocky areas and lighthouses that New England is famous for. The coast is spotted with buoys marking lobster pots, then the thousands of fishin’ and lobsterin’ boats many people only see on postcards or in movies. I’d place my bet on Rockport, Massachusetts as being the most photographed fishing port in the world. Those boats are real, and so are the people. It may look glamorous in the summer, but how’d you enjoy being on a fishin’ boat off the Maine coast in January? Burr! That hits me about the same way as the sharp squeak when someone runs their fingernail over a blackboard!

A fair number of people spend time in the Mountains of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont during the summer. I like to save that for fall, when the air is clear and crisp. It’s always cooler around the mountains, so they are enjoyable in the summer, too. Franconia Notch, Cannon Mountain and Profile Lake are NEVER going to be the same! Can you imagine it, 200 million years and the Old Man had to quit during our lifetime! Now, here’s something that most New Englanders don’t even know. The water that trickles down from Cannon Mountain into Profile Lake (I used to call this “The Old Man’s Tears”), is the northernmost origin of what eventually becomes the Merrimack River, flowing into what is know as the Gulf of Maine in the Atlantic Ocean.

One of the greatest summer attractions here is the thousands of lakes, with Lake Winnepesaukee being one of the largest and most famous. It’s 71 sq. miles of mountain spring water. Sound refreshing? It is. It’s one of the most beautiful lakes I’ve ever seen, but there are so many others that are truly beautiful as well. There’s something particularly intriguing about these lakes in the early morning, around sunrise. Quite often there’s a foggy mist rising up from them. That seems to be the best time to hear the call of a loon. Wow, are they unique! It’s not just their unusual shrill call, but the fact they can dive down and swim below the surface for minutes at a time.

Well, I’ve said enough about summertime here. I’m going to go enjoy it. On these beautiful summer evenings, now that all the plants are planted in the garden, I’ll plant my self there for a while and watch the flowers bloom and the vegetables ripen. Have a happy and safe summer!

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Ken's New England Journal: Archive;
Special Delivery
The Simple Life
Fall in New England
Holidays in New England
The Spring Thaw

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About the Author;
Introduction and Background I was born in Nashua, NH in 1948 as our country was recovering from World War II. A few days later, my parents took me home to Hollis, NH, where I lived until going off to college in 1967. My mother was a Hollis native, where my grandparents, her mother and father, lived. My Father was born in Brookline, NH, just west of Hollis. His mother, who was a widow long before I was born, lived in Brookline on the family farm. That area of Southern NH, bordered by the Nissitissett, Nashua, Souhegn and Merrimack rivers was the setting where I experienced life for my first 20 years. Hollis and Brookline were both small New England towns where everybody knew everybody, literally. Most of the people were at least third or fourth generation residents. There was no serious crime, no full time police force and for the most part, people didn’t even think about locking their house doors. There was no need.

The people, their culture and values were very conservative. The landscape, with hundreds of acres of woods, orchards and farmland, has numerous ponds and streams. The largest pond, Long Pond, eventually was renamed Silver Lake. The State of New Hampshire took over the north end of the lake in the 1950’s and made it into “Silver Lake State Park”. That was our major tourist attraction. On hot summer afternoons, particularly on weekends, it was always filled to capacity. Those were the days the “townies” stayed away.

It’s now been half a century since my very earliest memories, shaped by the rural life and culture that is rapidly becoming extinct. In my writing, every now and then, there will be traces of this culture and the values of rural Southern New Hampshire and the Merrimack Valley of New Hampshire and Northern Massachusetts.

Ken@boomerjournals.com