Yesterday we visited a local farmer’s market (yes, we’re lucky enough to have more than one nearby) and found new potatoes, peas, onions, apples, cucumbers. Our garden is beginning to produce but while we wait for things to ripen, it’s wonderful to benefit from gardens that started earlier with a greenhouse, cold frame or grow tunnel.
Visiting farmer’s markets is one of the best parts of summer. So much more fun than going to a store, and so many offerings; we buy handmade natural soap from one stall and Amish baked goods from another. (I don’t bake much in the summer; I try to keep the oven off.)
Then we came home and I sat in the gazebo with the kids and taught them to shell peas. They were enthralled, and even the cat came to watch and chase the occasional runaway pea. Shelling peas and snapping beans are great excuses to sit and watch the sights of summer, a chance to relax in between bouts of weeding and picking in the garden.
It’s fun to watch the garden to grow, to see what other gardens are producing, to have fresh flowers in the house as various things come into bloom and stalk the nearby woods for ripe blackberries. Summer is full of timeless pursuits that carry over from generation to generation.
Croquet on the lawn, backyard badminton, stealing a juicy strawberry from the garden, shelling peas to have for dinner with onions and new potatoes roasted on the outdoor grill. Campfires and cookouts. The sound of lawnmowers and the smell of freshly cut grass. Summer is a feast for the senses and many summer pastimes are free or very inexpensive. And watching your kids shell peas for you? Priceless.
I remember running through the sprinkler in the early evening as my very pregnant mama, granny and aunt snapped beans. They sat in redwood outdoor furniture that had horrid green and yellow plastic cushions. The lightning bugs flitted about. Mama gave birth to my brother later that evening. I was 3 years old.
Not too many years after that night I sat on that awful redwood furniture, my legs sticking to the plastic seats, snapping beans with my mama, granny and aunt. I started helping when I was 5. I started being responsible for my share of the beans when I was 7. I started canning my own beans when I was a newlywed but helped Mama all along the way and still help her to this day.
Summer time is a time of growth. This summer I plan to work in my spiritual garden. I’ll be working in my vegetable garden too!
Annmarie, summer is the perfect time to tend spiritual gardens along with physical ones. The physical work tends to lead to clarity. I’m asking myself a lot of questions while I weed and mulch.