It is the time of the season when the garden has gone feral, relieving me of all illusions that I ever had any control over anything. At first I feel horror, what sort of terrible gardener am I to allow such wanton wildness? The glossy pages of a garden magazine  would never feature my garden—too many edible weeds and floppy plants, too many allowances made for plants growing in unplanned places including the pathways, no organization, no eye for structure or contrasts, no attempts to make the garden look a certain way. It’s not a veg patch with everything growing in regimented rows. It’s not a flower garden or a charming cottage garden that looks artfully chaotic. Everything is a wild jumble.

But then I see the yellow arugula flowers bouncing with bees. And there is a monarch butterfly sipping from the hyssop. A streak of red across the garden as the young cardinal rockets from tree to tree. The chirp of crickets. The buzz of cicadas. The songs of sparrows and wrens. The screech of jays. The chittering of squirrels. A chicken announcing an egg has been laid. 

I walk through the tangle and find treasures—a ripe tomato, the pineapple-y pop of a ground cherry in my mouth, the purple flowers on the black beans, the dangling pole beans ready to pick for dinner, the impossibly long pods on the black-eyed peas, the bright red flowers on the scarlet runner beans, pink and purple morning glories, the ferny mass of asparagus that looks so exotic and delicate, the potato plants that have grown huge this year and are still flowering, the peas I planted hoping for fall pods that have already grown several inches, the radish sprouts, and everywhere arugula. 

While shopping at out food co-op James picked up a quart-size box of organic baby arugula to show me. Guess how much, he said. The box looked so small, uh, $2? I guessed. Try $5, he said. I saw amongst the lettuces and kales small bunches of larger leafed arugula for $2.99. Clearly my garden is an arugula gold mine. We have so much of it that it that it goes on everything—sandwiches, pizza, stir fries, burritos—anywhere we want greens. I walk out into the garden and in less than 5 minutes I have a handful of fresh, organic arugula, baby and full-sized. For nothing. I planted it once a few years ago, it readily reseeds and the chickens scratching around in the garden spread it to every nook and cranny.

At this time of year Arugula Meadow Yardfarm comes into its golden-flowered glory. And while the garden will never be featured in any magazine, I love every single feral inch of it.

The elderberries are ripe and last weekend and this I have been sitting, listening to podcasts, and pulling the little berries off the stems. There is a giant bag washed and frozen, another large bowl that James is currently making into jam, and still more in the bucket I have to get to over the next couple of days. 

Sadly, there will not be any grapes. The birds and squirrels ate every single one. We have never had this happen before, no one has every bothered the grapes, so I was shocked when I went out to check to see how they were getting along only to discover every stem was picked clean. There were so many this year and I had been looking forward to them so much that I nearly cried. Next year we will have to drape netting over them.

But, I foraged plums! The small tree I have been eyeing at the lake has a few, but there is another plum location I pass by five days a week on my way to and from work. For years I thought they were crabapples and was not interested. But last year I realized they were plums, too late to forage any. But Friday I got to leave work early and on the way home stopped and picked a small bag. The trees are loaded but many of them were not yet ripe, but enough. And oh, they are so sweet and delicious! 

There are other city foragers who know about them, but I hope to be able to pick a few more next week before they are all gone. Sharing a commons like the plums is so hard. I don’t want to be greedy, but I want to be greedy and pick a whole bunch to make a plum compote for Sunday waffles and plum jam for winter and, of course, eat a bunch fresh. Once my own plum tree starts producing the greedy urges will lessen, but until then, I want all the plums! But I don’t take them all, only a small share. Sharing is good, but so hard!

Time to get back to de-stemming elderberries.

Reading

• Book: Tehanu by Ursula Le Guin. This is book 4 of Earthsea, one I have not read before, and oh I am loving it so much! We return to Tenar from The Tombs of Atuan, now a middle-aged woman, recently widowed, a mother to grown children, who takes on the care of a badly burned child who was ill-treated and almost murdered by her family. Ged also returns, but he is no longer Archmage, no longer has wizard powers, and is struggling to figure out who he is besides a wizard. Tenar is sympathetic because she had to figure out who she was after she left being High Priestess at the tombs. But, like the practical woman she is, she is also frustrated by Ged’s mooning about because, get over it man! I love her so much.
• Graphic nonfiction: Crash Course: If you want to get away with murder, buy a car by Woodrow Phoenix. A really well done book on cars in America that asks why we put up with the death, destruction, and pollution they cause? Why do we privilege cars over livable cities? And yes, he says in an afterward, he wrote it to make people mad, but also to get them to start asking questions.

Listening

• Podcast: This Mythic Life: The Hagitude Sessions: Tanya Shadrick. The first episode in a series about older women, creativity, and the mythic. The host is Sharon Blackie, a psychologist, writer, and mythologist.
• Podcast: The Great Simplification: Nora Bateson: Complexity Between the Lines. Bateson is the daughter of well known ecologist and philosopher Gregory Bateson and an excellent thinker all in her own right. Here she talks about systems dynamics and how systems are built on relationships.

Watching

• She-Hulk. Played by Tatiana Maslany of Orphan Black fame, this is so far fantastic. The feminism is unapologetic and gives me all the feels.
• Sandman. I have only read a couple of the comics, when is sister, Death, showed up in them I liked her so much I read her comics and never got back to Sandman. But the show is so far pretty good. And Jenny at Reading the End, who has read all the comics and is a big fan, is doing an episode re-cap that is always great fun to read.