I can always find peace in the garden. No virus, no violence, even the bees and I get along.

Cucumbers are forming. They are the kind that you can the skins, unlike those we buy in the stores in our off season. I’ll have plenty to just eat, enough for my son and DIL, and hopefully enough to make some batches of freezer pickles, with onion, dill, and red pepper. That is so good from the freezer in the winter. We had some last year for Christmas dinner.

Beans are headed up the poles of the bamboo pergola. Green beans and Hopi lima beans are climbers, then I plant kidneys and black turtle beans which are more like bush beans. The first Japanese beetles came up from the ground over the weekend. They only like the green beans for whatever reason. Ohh, but I’m ahead of them! I don’t use any poisons in the yard or garden, but there are beetle traps that only attract Japanese beetles, with a pheromone that’s strong and draws them to the trap. They slide down a plastic thing in the trap and into a bag, and can’t get back out. I hung the trap up this morning, cos a lot of them can make lace out of the green bean leaves really quick.

Tomato row is looking good. I always hang Tibetan prayer flags in the garden, cos we can use all the help we can get, and I like the concept. My DIL already picked some cherry tomatoes, and all of them are growing well. I have what I hope is a strong enough structure to keep any from falling over, and I’ve already had to wire most of them up several times. We’ll eat them, and I’ll freeze a lot, and freeze basil too. Then at some point in the fall, I’ll take an afternoon and make a big batch of tomato sauce, simmering it 3 or so hours. That tastes really good in the winter too. No preservatives, nothing I wouldn’t want to eat, just good tomatoes and some herbs.

I have a place where an old maple tree was removed, and the ground there is still sinking from the stump and roots still rotting, so that place is hard to mow. So I planted the area in wildflower seeds. I have no idea what some of them will be but the whole group of them should provide a colorful area with lots of good flowers for the pollinators too. You can’t eat everything from the garden, and colorful flowers help to brighten up your day, and life. We all need some of that.

I had a scare yesterday when I was watering the wild flowers. What, something jumping, running, brown, running at my feet…what? Oh, we have a tiny baby bunny who’s been hanging around for several weeks. So out of the wildflowers, in a bunny explosion, ran a very scared and very wet baby bunny. He ran up toward a big tree with some growth under it as fast as his little legs could go.

I have a little resting place down at the end of tomato row, with some flowers in pots and my little seat made from slate and blocks. It’s pretty there and the seat is a good place to sit for a while, or put my coffee and phone on while I’m down there working. Peace…..in the garden.

There’s always lots of weeding and other work to be done, but I’m home more this year and glad to be able to do it. It’s like a meditation, working in the garden; starting from tiny seeds and watering, tying things up as they get bigger and watching the magic of the earth do its wonders again. I always plant enough seeds to have plenty of stuff for us, and hopefully enough to share. Being able to share some of the things I’ve helped to raise is one of the blessings of gardening.

If you’re a gardener, I hope yours is growing well. If not, hopefully you can get some of summer’s bounty from local markets, etc. Nothing beats fresh, home grown veggies.

As always, I hope you and yours are well. There are more reasons to say that to my readers and everybody now, more than ever before. Take care and be kind to yourself, cos these are rough times we have here.