LATE SUMMER BOUNTY



I love wandering through my garden just as the sun comes up each morning...the plants still damp from the previous nights watering, the suns rays flirting with the colorful fruits and veggies... the butterflies flitting from plant to plant.
















I love the whole gardening experience ... the early, spring tilling up of the ground, planting the tiny seeds, waiting and watching for the very first sprouts to emerge. Its all too exciting. The miracle of "life".

I can recall big gardens I'd put in every year when Rod and I were first married, and the boys were babies...it was much harder work back then, mostly because my gardens were so big, and I'd never heard of "raised bed" gardening! But the daily weeding, hoeing, harvesting, hard manual work that it truly was, always gave me such a sense of accomplishment and pride. And back then (not that "back then" was all THAT long ago, I'm talking 30 or so years) it was just something most of us in a small town did...we never had to think about what sprays or insecticides were covering our produce, what hormones were being fed the meat we ate or

the milk we drank contained, even if we or our neighbors didn't produce it ourselves! What was in the supermarkets was fresh and you could trust that what you were buying/eating was safe. How far we have strayed in such a short time...what comes next? How will the foods and all the additives and poisons they contain affect our children and grandchildren years/decades from now? We all bear responsibility for letting it all get out of hand ... we broke it, but we can fix it too...but will we?


I'm happy to report I haven't had a "fig beetle" sighting in a few weeks now. Nothing is more frightening than being wrenched from a "zen garden" reverie than the loud, vibrating hum of their buzz as they come flying through the garden. Fortunately (or not!) they had taken up residence in my large nectarine tree, happily ensconced among the soft yummy fruits, so didn't seem to want to stray very far from the trough! But on occasion they'd exercise their perogative and zoom over to where I'd be working in my garden beds, and I'd hightail it for my back door! I wonder if anyone else is as shaken by these big, black irridescent bugs as I am!


Man - despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments - owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains. ~Author Unknown