Gardening · New House · Reading

A Gathering of Poetry | August 2025

a small green bowl filled with dusty blueberries

It was the best of summer times – with plentiful potatoes and just the right sized zucchini, it was the worst of summer times – with chipmunks stealing succulent blueberries and cucumbers that overwhelmed.  Almost making me regret planting this last garden on First Street all the while exploring options for next summer’s raised beds on Solstice Place. While carrots were not part of my planting plan, Leah Naomi Green’s poem is fitting for this month’s Gathering of Poetry.

Please excuse my blatant plagiarism of the hallowed Dickens Tale and for being a tad bit late in joining Bonnie and Kat for this Gathering of Poetry.

Bibliographic credit:  Green, Leah Naomi. The More Extravagant Feast.  © 2020 Graywolf Press.

Baking · Gardening

Tasty Rhubarb Scones

five rhubarb scones on a blue plate

Fresh rhubarb pecan scones arrive hot from the oven in honor of this first day of meteorological summer.  Our lush rhubarb patch with five plants on the south side of the garage sprouted early and produced crisps in April, bread and cakes in May, and dozens of scones baked each month.

Moving from the alley to our raised bed, nearly all the planting is complete thanks to the healthy selections at Sargent’s on 2nd and Annie’s in Madison: beets, cucumbers, nasturtiums, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, and zucchini, as well as garlic that survived a dry, nearly snowless winter.  We revel in the wonder that is summer in Minnesota, where we experience frigid short winter days only to enjoy, just months later, long fertile growing hours.

Gardening

Perfection Free Zone

small gray, three tiered fountain in foreground with blue flower pots in the background

At our house, the placement of the solar-powered bubbling fountain is a summer milestone. So, while sipping a refreshing G&T, I can toast that task done.

My potted herbs frame the backdoor and the large Italian terracotta pot is filled with geraniums – my annual homage to Grandma Kuster.  The surplus of these vibrant red Swiss-window box flowers now greets front door visitors; a very useful placement of a “more than needed” purchase.

The summer veggies are off to a good start.  They already offer easily recognizable healthy leaves, albeit in a slightly revised selection of garden goodness:  1 grape tomato, 2 green peppers, 3 nasturtiums, 4 cucumbers, and 21 hills of four varieties of potatoes.

Despite things looking good, I was feeling like whoa-is-me Eeyore; guilty for not having accomplished more especially as I watched our next-door neighbors convert their front yard from lawn to micro-prairie restoration in yesterday’s drizzly Saturday weather.

Then this morning, with a standing room only crowd for the annual flower communion, there was the slightest slip-up in the service.   (Really, it was smaller than tiny, negligible, infinitesimal – are there other synonyms?)  We all laughed, especially when Rev. Ruth declared the sanctuary to be a Perfection Free Zone.  Inspiring advice to take from church into the garden and unto the screened porch (which still needs cleaning).