Thursday, June 2, 2016

The Month of June


June is bustin’ out all over!
All over the meadows and the hills!
- Rogers and Hammerstein from “Carousel”

Summer is finally here with the beginning of June. No matter what the calendar says, to me June is the first month of summer.  June is the month of graduations and/or open houses honoring the graduates. It’s the month when children and teachers start their summer vacations. It’s the month that’s very popular for weddings, and why shouldn’t it be with so much that is blooming now.
Clematis & other flowers where Chickadees nest.

Some interesting facts about June: In the Georgian calendar, the one that most of the world uses, June is the 6th month. However according to the early Roman calendar, June was actually the 4th month, and only had 29 days. In 46 B.C., Julius Caesar gave June 30 days instead of 29 when he reformed the Roman calendar. June was named after the Roman goddess June, who is the wife of Jupiter. However, others say that its name actually came from the Latin word juniors. It means the younger ones, which is opposed to majors or elders which May’s name was originated from. In June spring ends and summer begins in the Northern Hemisphere. During this time all the flowers and plants are very beautiful. In the southern hemisphere, winter begins in June.
Roses and clematis on arbor leading to gardens in my side yarsd

Some fun facts about June: The birthstones for June are the pearl, alexandrite and moonstone. The birth flower for June is the rose – which is why my first book, The Blue Rose takes place in June.

On June 1, 1792, the state of Kentucky, also known as the Bluegrass State, became the 15th state of the United States. Also on June 1, 1796, Tennessee, also known as The Volunteer State became the 16th state of the United States. On June 14, 1900, Hawaii was organized as a territory. 

On June 14, 1777, the flag of the United States was adopted by the Continental Congress. June is the month we celebrate Flag Day. On June 15, 1836, Arkansas also known as the Natural State, became the 25th state of the United States.


June is National Candy Month, National Dairy Month, and National Iced Tea Month, and I’m sure there are other things that declare June as their national month, too, if I’d dug deep enough to find out what they are. There are a lot of other June facts, too, if you want to Google June Facts, you can read about them.



It’s Father’s Day on June 19th this year. My father died a little over twenty seven years ago, and I still miss him as do all my siblings and the people who knew him. Warm, friendly, with a great sense of humor and highly intelligent, he was a role model for all of us including some of his nieces and nephews.




One of my many rhododendrons

June is more than just the days that are important in June. For me it’s when the rhododendrons come in full bloom, as well as the roses, clematis, irises, foxgloves and so many other flowers. More and more butterflies arrive and birds are busy feeding their youngsters, and the hummingbirds make frequent trips to my hummingbird feeder.







My old guinea fowl patrolling my weedy gardens
Like the song, June is busting out all over not just in flowers, but also with weeds and lawns that need almost constant mowing. I still have to plant the dahlias and canna rhizomes and bulbs that I wintered over, and some more vegetable seeds to plant because of a cold and wet spring that put me behind. I’m hoping by the time this blog is up, all the flats of flowers I bought will already be planted. Will all my weeding be done? Ha!!!! It would take three full time gardeners to handle that. Have I mentioned before that I’m an incurable optimist who always takes on more than one person can handle? I get lectured on this often by one of my daughters and one of my sisters, too. But “I yam what I yam,” said Popeye the Sailor Man, and that’s true for me, too.

What do you like most about June?



9 comments:

  1. What a glorious garden you have, Gloria! When we lived in Northern Maine local lore held that you didn't put your garden in the ground until June 7th. After that, killing frosts were rare. We learned the wisdom of that the year we put our garden in a couple of weeks before Memorial weekend. It had been so hot...the ground completely defrosted...the frost came Memorial weekend, killed everything. We were able to replant after June 7th, but in future years we started everything in cold frames (on wheels in case we had to get them into the shelter of the garage) and NOTHING went in the ground until after the 7th.

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  2. Kait, I've had that happen to my apple trees, but never as late as Memorial Day. My apple trees are old ones that came with my small farm. I never spray them with insecticides so they aren't perfect, but still good enough to eat if I cut out the little spots that show insect damage. We did get a late snow about three weeks ago, but it was light and didn't do any damage. Of course, even NE Ohio where I live is much further south than Northern Main - a state I've visited at least four times and love although mostly along the coast.

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  3. Around where I live, the "plant" date is Mother's Day. Sometimes we get a bit of a frost, or even snow, but seldom anything really damaging. This year, it was very warm early, then we had a cold and rainy spell, and all of a sudden it was summer.

    I was talking to my daughter, who lives in California but is interning in Washington, DC, this summer one evening, making arrangements to pick her up from the airport the next day. I warned her that it was chilly and damp. The next afternoon, when I picked her up, it was in the high eighties and sunny. I lost a bit of credibility there.

    Whenever I hear (or read) the song Gloria started with, I can't help but think of the very adolescent version we used to sing:

    June is busting out all over,
    June better get a bigger bra.

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  4. KM, weather in the spring is so unpredictable. We've gone from chilly to warm and back to chilly all within the same week. Today they're predicting rain after more than a week of hot dry days. It looked like rain when I got up, but now the sun's out again.

    I love that version of June is Bustin' Out all over. I never heard that before. June used to be a common girl's name, but not so much anymore.

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  5. Your garden is beautiful, Gloria! I especially like your arbor with the clematis. Since we moved, I miss my old plants - my roses and the day lilies, and especially a clematis my neighbor had. It was so vigorous it would climb over her fence into my yard!
    We're in New England, so the weather is unpredictable, to say the least. It was in the high 80s a month or so ago, and just chilly and damp since. Memorial day weekend was so chilly a lot of folks packed up early and went home.

    June was always a fun month with the kids in school - field days and graduations and the start of summer vacation!

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  6. You have a wonderful garden. Great pictures too. There are so many good things about June that I can't name just one.

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  7. KM - Hysterical! I never heard that version of June, but we must have gone to very similar schools. I sang the leprosy song for my husband a couple of weeks ago (as much as I could remember anyway). He speculated that my private school might really have been an institution for wayward girls in disguise! We had tons of those songs...and sayings...

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  8. We saw a local university production of "Carousel" so I recognized the song about June. June is full of everything, weddings and graduations, the first big rose bloom of the season, the re-blooming daylilies in bud.

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  9. Thank you, Shari. The weather here can be unpredictable, too. Right now we're in a bit of a heat wave, and I'm praying for rain, but not too long ago, I wished it would stop raining.

    Thank you, Warren. What I remember about Oregon is that they have lovely gardens, too.

    Kait, I not only never heard of the June song, but I've never heard of the leprosy song, either. For me it was Girl Scout songs that were funny.

    Margaret, it's all those things, but this far north, my daylilies don't have buds yet, but the peonies are exquisite as well as the rhododendrons, and more and more roses are starting to
    bloom.

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