“Nothing is complete, nothing is perfect and nothing is ever finished. I have developed tender feelings toward the unrelenting drive toward entropy that I take with me. It is everywhere and in everything.”
-Marc Hamer, How to Catch a Mole
The heat of August finds me retreating into shade by afternoon. There is a dusty smell in the air, a lingering scent of yarrow blooms drying on the stem, and the musky smell of figs, which leave that sticky and milky sap in the cotton bag I use for picking. It’s the month where my hands seem perpetually stained by blackberries. A time when golden grass seed sticks between my toes and reveals itself in my hair hours later.
August is truly the time to enjoy the fruits of our labor in the garden. Finally, the tomatoes and basil come in abundance, and suddenly a fear of what I will do with all these zucchinis and zinnias begins to creep up my back. So much hard work has gone into this month, and yet so much must happen for the months ahead. I lug wooden trays of cool-season vegetables holding radicchio, broccoli, and cauliflower into the garden for planting. These warm summer days are needed for those crops to grow, as they do little but persist through the cold months. They wait patiently, silently growing in the background while we gush over the summer flowers, and joyfully pick green beans. They know that in just a few months they will be the stars of the show as we clamber out in winter rains to wonder at the marvel of our past selves. How is it that in all this joyful abundance of summer did we remember the longing we would have for these rosy pink heads of radicchio in the dark and cold of winter?
For now, I dance through rows of dahlias almost daily, snipping spent blooms to keep them going into late Autumn. In summer, it almost looks easy; I carry bushels of green onions, fennel, and boysenberries into the kitchen or arrange flowers for the table, finding myself forgetting the strained back from the endless compost loads that made it possible. I delicately tuck the cucumbers back onto their trellis wire, easily ignoring the fact that only months ago I had to wear a brace on my wrist because my carpal tunnel was so bad.
Stewarding land is the hard work of many days, the collective work of years. It means continuing to show up even when things don’t look good, when the image of the garden in my head is far away from what I see every day. We live in an age where hard work is glorified in short bursts of before-and-after photos or snappy time-lapses, while simultaneously living in an age where hard work is eschewed, traded for shortcuts with AI, or avoided entirely. But gardening requires a different kind of work ethic altogether. The kind that sees the long picture, that is willing to show up a little bit every day and continue to doggedly pull the bindweed and thistle. It’s not always romantic, and what people often see are the after pictures: the baskets of produce on the counter, the delight of the shade from the elderberry tree you planted.
There is a gentleness to this work that is balanced by grit. A determination and patience in knowing that although I pull this thistle over and over each week, one day it will be weak enough and won’t return. I balance this work with the joy of being in the garden. I put my head down and do the job at hand, only to look up to question the bee that is riding on another larger bee’s back. We show up even when smoke fills the air and the heat is pressing, and check that all is well. Making sure we remember to take the time to swim in cold mountain lakes and lay in hammocks with friends who themselves know this daily toil, this willingness to give a piece of ourselves to the land.
It’s not the kind of work that can be fully shared in a short sound bite; instead, it’s this messy in-between. The sweat of a day spent harvesting, watering, and deadheading. The knowing that it’s nowhere near over. It’s the work of a lifetime; all we can do is learn to pause in between, watching that hummingbird rest on the bean trellis, or the song sparrow who quietly works next to you while you plant the radicchio. Leaning into the laughter and joy of the community, who remind you why you’re doing all you do. Then you return, hands to the earth, pulling the persistent thistle, knowing that one day it won’t be there.
With Love from The Garden,
Shannon
Farm to Table
Our tasting room menu this month features a tasting menu that highlights ingredients grown in our very own estate garden and sourced directly from local producers.