Sometimes everything comes together like a beautiful piece of music
or a good night at the tables in Vegas, with all the elements of Nature
merging to generate a seamless whole.

Moisture, temperature, and the other vagaries of season and climate
orient in their mysterious cycles, striking an ideal balance until — tah-dah!
— you’ve got vegetables. Other times, other years, no matter how you
turn the soil, weed, mulch, compost, supplement and talk to your plants,
you may still suffer the indignities of marauding pests, depressing
blossom-end rot, leaf drop, rain splits, and a less-than-spectacular
harvest.

For our garden (somewhat lopsided in terms of sweat equity since my
partner in life ‘n’ crime, Mr. Greenthumbs, does the heavy lifting),
this year looks to be somewhere in the middle. That’s the way it goes.

Spring was promising, with a multitude of spinach, lettuces and green
beans which we indulged in with, yes, gay abandon. I never get sick of
beans plucked straight off the vine (butter-steamed simply and seasoned
with a few sprigs of rosemary or thyme), and salads can morph through
endless interpretations before losing their appeal. Dinners were halfway
to being done just by being harvested and brought into the house!

Then mid-July came, and things got a little dicey. It started out
well: Swiss chard continued to exhibit a rabbit-like reproductive vigor;
no matter how many times I pinched off the red-ribbed stems, I’d come
back to find a new batch popping out within days. We also culled our
very first-ever broccoli and enjoyed it in a stir-fry. The oyster sauce
was, admittedly, not local, but did come from the Super-G Mart, a large
international grocery store that opened in town last year.

We even got a few purple carrots, an experiment in our clay-ey,
much-amended soil. A nearby cucumber was a surprise, tucked beneath a sprawl of
leaves like a Kewpie in hiding. Thinly sliced and bathed in rich balsamic vinegar
and some fresh basil, it popped as a sharp accompanying note aside more
mellow mealtime flavors.

But now, as August hits its stride, the garden is struggling a tad. There
are still poblano and hot peppers coming on, and a few other things, but there have
also been some disappointments. As much as I love tomatoes, ours did
miserably this year. So sad. (I should note here that there are actually
several gardens on our small piece of property, with the one in the
front yard lagging pitifully compared to the one in back; Mr.
Greenthumbs suspects the soil pH was negatively altered by some mulch he
used this spring. Adjustments will be made.) Sun exposure, types of
plants and a million other factors are no doubt also in play. At least
our big-leaf Italian basil is boomin’! If all goes well, I’ll be making pesto this
weekend.

One thing that gardening teaches you, if you’re paying attention, is
to be patient. Nature doesn’t hurry, yet everything always gets done.
Also, that one year’s disappointments don’t doom the next season’s
efforts to failure. Pretty good guidelines for living, not just
gardening, if you ask me.