Summer arrives

Summer decided to arrive while I was visiting family down in California.

How lovely it is to come home from a week away and find ripened strawberries and sugar snap peas. My squash and pumpkins are thriving and the lettuce hasn't bolted yet. The tomatoes are unfurling finally willing to put some energy into growth now that the heat has come. I picked a cup of gooseberries to make jam and can now see that once again my apple trees are putting forth a bumper crop.

While it is still early, I am going out to pick a bouquet of roses and delphinium. Perhaps some herbs to make some fresh pasta sauce for dinner. I'm sure I can find many a chore to keep me outside today – weeding, watering, pruning – anything to smell the heated soil and freshly cut grass. The cedar tree and rosemary. I can continue to pull up all the bronze fennel that reseeded itself throughout the garden. One thing that I also enjoy is watching how the corners of my yard waste pile are now producing all sorts of garden plants that I would be happy to see go wild in the unkept grass beyond my yard. The Valerian and catmint. There are some hollyhocks as well. Seed well, my friends and fill that corner of the property with your bounty.

Summer Solstice is quickly approaching

Up here in the northwest part of the country, summer's arrival means that our days become incredibly long. I woke up the other morning a little after 3 am and could tell that the sky was already beginning to grow light with the coming dawn. This is the time of year when the birds start to chirp by 4am. That might not matter to a lot of people but when you sleep with your windows open like I do – and you just happen to have four swallow houses stationed on the eaves nearby – it can be quite a morning chorus.

So whether it is raining, cold or sunny – summer is coming with its longest day of the year next weekend. Just because we've had one of the coldest June's on record doesn't mean that the next couple of months have to be anything but splendid. I can dream, anyway. In the garden, everything except the lettuce and spinach has struggled to get a foothold in the cold soil. This morning I finally see the first true leaves on my squash and beans. The peas have finally decided that it is time to grow. Some of my tomatoes are still only a few inches tall but they're green and still might pull it out.

I'm looking at my garden with slightly different eyes this year. As the price of produce climbs in the market and probably will continue to do so with the increasing cost of oil – the idea of buying local or growing it myself becomes a viable alternative. I wonder how long it makes sense for some of these companies to ship apples from New Zealand or grapes from Chile. At what point does the cost of transportation make that apple too expensive to buy? For me, I'll wait a few more months until the crops off my own apple trees fill my bins.

We are certainly living in interesting times. I don't think it is often that most Americans feel the crunch from influences outside our own borders. My mother remembers what it was like to live through WW2 – the rationing, the victory gardens, the blackouts. And while my world is crunched by the awareness of high gas prices and rising food costs – I simply grimace and bear it. How many families in this country have been pushed right over the edge with those costs?

Whole Foods is running a campaign right now to feed children in Rwanda. A worthy cause, I am sure. What I wonder about is the amount of children in this country who also are going without food. I heard a report that food banks in our state are not able to keep up with the demand. Not only are more people needing their services, but the amount of food that is being provided has been impacted by higher costs.

So I am looking at my garden with the understanding that what grows edible there is a gift I give myself on many levels. I have a vision of small community gardens popping up around the country as more and more people begin to value what they can grow and eat as a viable alternative to the high costs at the market. Those kinds of shifts take time and momentum – but I have a feeling that it will be close to never when gas prices are back down around 2.00 a gallon.

Is this June?

Every year around this time I write about being completely disgruntled by the weather. I can't help it. I spent 25 years looking forward to June – in California. It was the perfect month. School was ending, the temperature was warming up and the beach was waiting. Well, I'm waiting for the drizzle to disappear, the temperature to warm way up so I can lose this sense that somehow I've been kicked back to March.

My tomato plants are barely a foot high – waiting for that warmth to tell them that it's time to start growing. Some of my cucumber seeds poked their heads out of the soil last week to see if it was time – and promptly stalled as if to say – wait a minute, I thought it was almost summer.

Sigh.

Even as I wandered the farmer's market this morning, I realized that there is a part of me that is ready for the bounty that summer brings. It is the warmth of the sun that creates that abundance and I am sorely missing it. Okay, I've said that in about as many ways as I can. I'll try to stop.

There is bounty right now – my red leaf romaine is ready to be picked – so tender and yummy. I've had spinach fresh from the garden and brought home some asparagus and sugar snap peas today. Most of my fruit is coming from California at the moment but next week the cherries should be ready. I can already tell that my strawberries will be late this year – they haven't even begun to set up fruit yet. And the carrots and peas are coming along, the beets and beans as well. My summer squash, like the cukes, is slowly making an appearance and I'm almost ready to set my pumpkins out.

Gardening is never an exacting practice. If it isn't the weather, it's the soil. If it isn't the soil – it's the pests or bunnies. There are always challenges to be rolled with. I read a report that says that we are going to have cooler than usual temps through mid July. So I think I'll plant some more spinach and lettuce and take advantage of what is there to be used.