Let Nature Do the Gardening

Our gardens are so bad ass. We had a cold, wet spring and a rainy, cool start to summer, but it’s July 7, and we have food ready to eat and almost ready to eat.

We’ve been enjoying summer squash for a couple of weeks already, and there are small cucumbers on the vines and small tomatoes on the tomato plants. In a few weeks, mature cucumbers will be coming in strong, with tomatoes right behind them. There are blossoms on the green bean vines, which means that beans will soon follow.

A rogue watermelon vine popped up, no doubt from a seed that made it through winter and germinated. We didn’t plant watermelon this year, but it looks like we’re going to have a few. The Asian veggies are going strong, particularly the Thai pink egg tomatoes. The plants, which we started from seed in May, are already big and bushy.

We pulled up the old arugula and lettuce this week, and planted fresh arugula seeds and spinach in its place. The spring arugula went to seed and became bitter; ditto for the lettuce. I need arugula, and I’m feeling like spinach. In a few weeks, we’ll have microgreens of both. In mid-August, we’ll plant lettuce seeds again for an autumn crop.

We have more kale than we can handle. I gave some to a neighbor this week. There are tiny peppers on our jalapeno and cayenne pepper plants, and the Thai Burapa pepper plants are slowly maturing. There are peppers on our red pepper plants. And the purple sweet potato vines are long and strappy. I’m really looking forward to our own Okinawa sweet potatoes this autumn.

Sunflowers and cosmos are getting tall and green. In a few weeks, we’ll be picking them for bouquets. There are buds on the zinnia plants, the clematis is creeping up the trellis, blue hydrangea are just opening, lemongrass is huge. All of these flowers were started from Franchi seed.

The weekend is hours away. I’m anxious to get to the ocean. I feel summer moving along quickly. Today is July 7: three years ago today at noon, my darling Daisy Sage died on the operating table. It was the most painful day of my life. She’s always in my mind’s eye: I’ll think of her every day until my life here is done. I look forward to meeting her in our next lives together, and wonder every day what it will be like.

Live in peace.