I am still planting. Can you believe it? I put in the herb garden last week. I had the stump guys come out and remove two stumps from the flower bed (chipping the driveway in the process), then planted lettuce, nasturtium, chives, sage, rosemary, cilantro, thyme, oregano, parsley and our lime tree.

In the vegetable garden, I am starting to harvest radishes. My carrots and beets are still tiny seedlings, which is alarming, but there isn’t much I can do other than frowning at them every time I go out to the garden. The peas and spinach, however, look good. I stuck some rooting potatoes in the ground, although I will be shocked if they come up. Still to plant sometime this month: a dwarf orange or tangerine bush, artichokes, strawberries, melons, tomatoes, green onions, sunflowers, squash, and lots and lots of peppers.

A trick I discovered: Next time you buy a bunch of green onions from the store, slice off the roots and plant them in the ground. They will sprout a new onion for you. It works! Amazing!

Here is a poem I am relating to:

Messenger
Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.