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 am still here, contrary to appearances. I’m working on a big jewelry project, and running out to pull weeds in the breaks. Will try to take some pictures and post some news soon.

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.

We were in Texas earlier this month. When I left there were 6 inches of snow on the ground so it was a treat to sit on a patio and drink iced tea for a few days while contemplating the blue, blue sky and noticing the warm textures around me.

When I got home the snow was gone. Within days the bulbs started nosing up out of the ground. Spring, spring, spring!!

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.

Estyn Hulbert jewelry is now available at Associated Diamond Brokers in Philadelphia.

Drop by if you’re in the area — the people are friendly and the store has been in business for nearly half a century.