The Garden Comes In

And it comes in all at once, too.

There's great satisfaction in seeing so much abundance, in a year when the rain has fallen in buckets. Bunny in Buckingham lost his garden, and he blames it on near-daily rains there. We had torrents, but then a dry-enough spell to get the tomatoes to begin ripening.

Tonight Nan is freezing squash and beans, and I'll soon be making gallons of Middle-Eastern tomato sauce by the gallon. It cans easily.  We probably have enough cukes to pickle but last year I put up a lot. So we'll eat cucumber soup and make gazpacho.

The work of building "Fort Tomato" and the groundhog invasion (one most certainly shot dead, another probable, two remaining) seems worth while. The invaders got about 12 ears of corn but more is on the way and the fence and traps seem to be working.

The year has been odd, as so many summers and winters have been since climate change really began to influence Virginia's two seasons of extremes. I'm happy for the cooler and wetter summer, but there will be hell to pay later.

And then there are the tart blackberries, growing wild everywhere, to contrast with a bowl of ice cream. It does not get much better in a Virginia Summer, our first in the country.