The garden this morning (III)

"Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy." — Psalm 96:11-12

The garden has reached the part of June where it does not need me to tell it what to do.

The beans are producing faster than I can pick them. The squash has made itself at home and is spreading into territory I did not allocate, which is what squash does and I should know better by now than to be surprised. The tomatoes are heavy with green fruit, each one hard and patient and waiting for the heat to do its work. The volunteer from the compost pile has yellow flowers on it this morning, which means it has decided it is going to be a tomato plant after all and not just a visitor.

I watered everything at six before the sun got up over the tree line. By eight the ground was dry again. That is the kind of June this is. The air holds the heat like a hand that will not let go, and the garden drinks everything I give it and asks for more, and I stand there with the hose and think about my mother, who watered by hand from a pump and never complained about it, though she complained about most things.

The daylilies along the fence are at their fullest. Orange, the old-fashioned kind that came with the property and have never been asked to do anything but come back every year, and every year they do. The roses are past their peak now, some of them gone soft and dropping petals into the grass, but there are still a few that are holding, and the ones that are holding are the best ones, the way the last of anything is sometimes better than the first.

Saturday is the solstice. The longest day. The garden does not know this, but I do, and there is something in me that marks it every year, the top of the light, the place where the year turns even though nothing visible changes. After Saturday the days start getting shorter, one minute at a time, and the garden keeps growing as if it does not know.

Lord, let the garden keep.

Ruby keeps a collection of prayers at her kitchen table. You can find them here.