The first cucumbers and tomatoes are in. Or I should say, they’re gone. Gobbled up after passing feline inspection. But there are more on the way.

I’m growing two kinds, Boothby’s Blonde (described by a friend as a naked Kirby), and Suyo, which is pretty spooky-looking but delicious.

Last night I picked some of each and made them into a salad that was made for me when I visited Serbia several years ago. I don’t have a recipe, it’s so simple you can make it however you like it. More or less garlic or dill. Creamy yogurt or low fat…

I sliced the cucumbers thinly using the slicing side of my box grater and put them in a colander in the sink, salted them heavily and let them drain for a while.

In a bowl I mixed some plain yogurt with a couple of cloves of garlic, crushed, and some chopped up dill. I rinsed the cucumbers, dried them a little, and tossed them in the yogurtey mix.

All done. Simple and refreshing.

I thought I’d post about it today since it’s Cukes & Zukes day on the cross-blog Summer Fest. Find more cucurbit recipes and info on Summer Fest at awaytogarden.com.

Last October I planted half a pound each of four types of garlic. I haven’t grown garlic before, being as this is my first year with a year-round garden, and I had no clue how much I’d be harvesting. Granted, the garlic took up more than 10% of the raised beds, which was kind of a clue…

This is the Inchelium Red softneck garlic, just one third of the harvest. The hardneck is still in the ground, waiting to be dug up.

I used the compost sifter M built for me and laid them out to dry in the shade on the patio.

It’s been 2 weeks and they’re looking ready to braid.

When all 4 types are harvested and cured I’d love to have a garlic tasting but I can’t figure out what dish would be a good comparison vehicle. Aioli? Garlic bread? I don’t think I’m up for crunching raw cloves.

It’s mid-summer hot — too bold to be out in the midday, but I ventured into the garden early this morning to water and find inspiration in the shapes and colors.

The ferny leaves of a garbanzo plant…

Soft focus constellations scattered across the Moon & Stars watermelon…

Snapdragons grown from seeds so small I had to use a damp toothpick to pick them up have turned into these complex, elegant blooms…

The cucumber and pumpkin vines are perfect spirals…

The fractal bloom on last year’s parsley plant and the perfect red of its Salvia neighbor…

The psychedelic iridescence of a resting fly…

And the spiky dome of vibrant orange at the center of an echinacea flower…

If I spent every minute of my life making, I could never come close to the endless creativity of this natural world.

Earlier this week I happened to look out the kitchen window when a fawn and her mama walked into the yard. They were nibbling the “deer-proof” forcythia. Then the fawn picked her way back to the maple in the far corner by the brush pile and curled up under it and her mom wandered away. The little one stayed nestled under the tree, almost invisible, all day.

I was a wee bit concerned and placed a call to in-the-know friends who confirmed that this is normal. Apparently does find a safe place to stash their babies and leave them there, coming back to check on them periodically. All week I’ve seen the mom come and go leaving her fawn stashed away in the weeds for hours at a time.

This morning I was making coffee when two female deer wandered into the yard, together with the fawn who raced around in the long grass. I was watching her run crazy loops when all of a sudden there were two fawns, both racing around, up and down the hill. Hilarious.

I wasn’t able to capture them both, but here’s a glimpse of one of them – a speck of fawn at speed.

The sound in the background in Noola chewing cardboard. Still.

When I lived in the city my connection to the weather and the seasons was very limited, the markers of change broad and unsubtle. Rain. Snow. Hot and sweaty. The day the leaves arrive on the trees.

Here, I look out the window and the grass looks 2 inches taller than yesterday, but has that sweet smell; the clover is blooming.

The peonies are here, gorgeous and brazen, then all of a sudden over, knocked out by the rain we wanted so badly.

The peas need to be picked daily… but not for long, and here’s the first strawberry. It tastes so good, shared between friends. Fruity communion.

Nature’s changing is fierce and constant. There’s an intensity not unlike riding the subway at rush hour, and it is tempting to turn the abundance and ferociousness of all this growth and plenty into another “should”, another chore, another reason to complain.

I hope I won’t do that and ignore the potential lesson — that life is plentiful and messy and overwhelmingly beautiful. And that just as we grieve the passing of one life, or season, or botched crop, another bursts open ahead.

“Listen, God love everything you love – and a mess of stuff you don’t. But more than anything else, God love admiration.

You saying God vain? I ast.

Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

What it do when it pissed off? I ast.

Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

— Alice Walker (The Color Purple)

I ate my first salad from the garden — arugula, spinach, lettuce, wintered-over parsley, and tiny kale thinnings. So good that I had salad for lunch and dinner.

I finally planted the asparagus starts that have been stored for weeks in the basement, waiting. I dug deep, spread the octopus roots over mounds of composted cow manure, and covered them up. An investment for the future.

The cats were too busy to help — monitoring the birds outside the bathroom window,

and killing the duster,

when they weren’t occupied with sleeping.

The last of the late tulips have faded,

but the perennials along the porch have been growing fast, with new blooms appearing daily.

On Sunday evening M went to the ice cream stand and got us milkshakes, and we sat on the porch and looked at the flowers and talked about nothing, while the children across the street rode their bikes, and someone in a white pickup waved as they drove by.

I dug up these carrots while clearing the garden beds for peas.

I planted them in late summer hoping for a fall and winter harvest, but the greens were munched by slugs and I didn’t think there would be any root growth at all. Funny what surprises lie under ground.

Sadly they tasted like old sticks.

I was standing by the sink, getting a glass of water, when I looked up and there, under the bird feeder, was an opossum!

The opossum. The one living under the barn. The one whose little hand prints I’ve seen in the snow and on the barn wall. My opossum!!

I yelled “Opossum!!” and scrambled for the camera, the cats scrambling in tow.

Meanwhile Possie calmly munched on sunflower shells. Then headed back home in an ambling way, following the path left by my footsteps to and from the feeder,

and sniffing the air.

When s/he disappeared out of view near the house I lost track, I think because s/he was skirting the walls, but when I ran over to the other side of the building there was Possie,

heading to that gap in the barn siding where we always suspected s/he lived.

The raised beds have been reduced to little bumps, practically invisible.

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving. This morning I said goodbye to the last member of my holiday visiting family and drove home from the train station in the rain, feeling suitably glum and wintery.

Some houses still have pumpkins on their stoops, but this was obviously the weekend for getting out holiday decorations – lots of glowing icicles hanging from eaves, and May-pole shaped ‘trees’ made of Christmas lights strands. Some blow-up snowman snow globes of which I will not speak another word.

My decorations are on my radar but not up yet. And the idea of getting a tree was collectively nixed the minute the word “kitten” was mentioned. I need some time to come up with a solution to that energetic, furry problem.

On Thanksgiving day we went up to Sam’s Point and walked in the fog,

and were given the gift of blue sky when we reached the lake at the top of the ridge.

There was fog dew on everything.

We came home and ate turkey and then leftovers, leftovers, leftovers for days.

On Saturday we visited the fairytale Mohonk Mountain House for lunch (and a menu change).

We got lost, briefly, in the garden maze but managed to find our way home.

It was a real vacation. We watched movies, played with cats large and small, and talked and laughed a ton. So good. It felt both long and short – how the best days always feel. I am grateful.