Other garden notes:
–> Killed my seedlings that were started way too late by overfertilizing them. Too much love, hyper-vigilance, overparenting, the story of my life. But I found some lovely heirloom transplants at my friendly neighborhood garden center and adopted them.
–> Lettuce is growing and I cannot wait for the first homegrown salad of the season.
–> Peas, melons, peppers, cukes, herbs, they’re all growing away, but this time I am determined to avoid a jungle mess, and so am studying pruning techniques.
–> My garden is child’s play compared with the restorative agricultural work being done by my Regrarian heroes, but we all must start somewhere.

I spend hours in the garden. I weed the beds and tie the bamboo supports with fresh twine. I spread black gold from my illicit compost pile over the turned soil. For a while I listen to music, then I listen to the wind, then I just listen. I feel gratitude for the warm sunshine and cool air, for a functioning (if aging) body, for the worms and dirt, for the smell of the wild mint and chives made fragrant by the cut of my spade.

But I also ache: for a little farm to tend with my gentleman farmer at my side; for the quiet evening conversation that often follows a long day spent outside; for sweet words of poetry whispered back and forth by the light of the full moon.

I bought a fluorescent light fixture with two full-spectrum grow bulbs and installed it in our basement pantry. I made pots out of newspaper and we planted seeds. I water them twice a day and imagine them tall and strong in the sunshine.

I saw a flash of yellow behind big green leaves and called to my kids to come see what I’d found. They dashed around our tiny backyard and squeaked with excitement. We had no idea these Boothby’s Blonde cukes were even growing deep in our jungle. Now to find the best sweet pickle recipe…

Jungle. I mean serious jungle chaos.

Big Apple gourds, Snow Cap beans and Boothby’s Blonde cukes (I think–did I mention we didn’t mark anything?) are taking over my fence. His melons are attacking her carrots. The tri-sticked teepee is maxed out and Good Mother Stallard bean tendrils wave around in the air above, disappointed.

The other bed is overflowing with lettuce and…uh…cukes, I think. I have a big Genovese basil plant. The Holy Basil I grew from seed is coming to life finally, I will use it to make a healing tea with fresh turmeric and ginger. Last week I had to perch on the back edge of the raised bed and hog tie the whateveritis to the fence to keep it from smothering the cilantro. I felt the eyes of neighbors, who already think I am crazy, bore into my flailing body as I struggled with the twine and the spiky stalks. It will all be worth in when we cut into the first melon, right?

This early summertime has been lovely. Some notes:

• We waited with bated breath for cicadas to visit, but in the end had to settle for finding a few husks out at a friend’s place in Haymarket.

• My kids were the very first people in our community pool on the Friday before Memorial Day. It was 54 degrees outside.

• We three went strawberry picking, our first time ever. My first time ever. There is no thing sweeter than a freshly-picked, ripe, red strawberry. Except for maybe a ripe and juicy peach.

• My garden is really thriving. It felt like an epic struggle against entropy and all forces of nature to get the garden pulled together, but now? Now I have lettuce, two varieties of basil, arugula, beans, melons, peppers, three varieties of heirloom tomatoes, chives, cilantro and probably a bunch more stuff I can’t remember growing in our humble backyard. And only one unmentionable incident involving a varmint and my lettuce plants.

I have tons of soft, sweet clover growing all over my backyard and I and refuse to cut it short or spray it with herbicides. I just can’t do it. I often sit on a bar stool in my kitchen and watch the bunnies and birds hang out. The bunnies chow on the flowers and the birds look for worms near my de facto/illicit compost pile.

On warm spring evenings, our neighbor carries his huge bass across the driveway and plants it in the front yard. His little ones often follow him over. We grab the sidewalk chalk and whatever instruments are handy and then we jam. People dance, people draw, people come out and stare.

Whatever. We are that family, the one with puffs of unruly clover in our lawn and messy drawings on our stoop and a ten year-old playing cajon and a twelve year-old dancing with a box on her head and a crazy mother filming the entire circus on an iPhone.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/o8yUl8mw6oE

I could have tried to describe with words the unbearable cuteness of the three tiny peppers that grew in my garden this summer, but the camera makes easy work of it. Next: Laura sews tiny clothes for the peppers and stages a pepper puppet show.

The succulents on our front steps look so beautiful after the rain.

I just love these little guys. Several times a day I open the tray lid, lower my face down to them and breathe in their warm, brown breath. Soon they will each have proper names, and we will take turns reading poetry and singing to them.

She walked out of the gray woods holding this pot. She found wild snow drops under a shaggy mat of brown. She freed them from leaf bones and dried tangles, then plopped them, dirt and all, into discarded plastic. Now the pot sits on our front steps and makes Mama happy.