I thought I thinned, but not enough. The peach branches droop down and down, and the fruit is small and blemished. But getting sweet.

Jens Jensen said, "first grow cabbages." Last year, my cabbages didn't amount to anything at all, and it looked like this year would be the same. I've been growing January King, and I figured next year, I should try a quick little summer cabbage instead.

But yesterday, after returning from a couple days away, I went to my garden and found this little head of cabbage forming. Maybe they'll amount to something after all.

Another thing I planted that amounted to nothing: the euphorbia corolatta I started from seed. I didn't know where I was going to plant them, but all the same I felt sorry not to have it growing. It's been a cool August, which puts me in an autumn frame of mind- reflecting and planning instead of eating tomatoes. I used to think there was no such thing as wasting time, but that's changing, and for the better.

Antonio Machado has a poem that says this: And everywhere I've been I've seen / men who dance and play, / when they can, and work / the few inches of ground they have.

Last week I went walking and found a whole hillside of euphorbia. I'll collect the seeds and try again.

This spring the rabbits ate all my parsley seedlings, so I let the bed go to kale, and decided have a summer without parsley. Most years I grow it in abundance. All other things equal, I like life better with lots of fresh parsley than without. It's interesting, though, to dispense with something indispensable for a while.

Last year, I did without cucumbers in the garden. I don't remember why. Maybe so I'd take more joy in them this year. They're my breakfast of choice right now, still scratchy, pulled from the vines before work and eaten whole. I still like beit alpha types best. This year, I grew Mideast Peace cucumber from Adaptive Seeds, and they're good- beit alpha types usually are. I have a soft spot for pickle little pickling cucumbers, too, but I never grow them and don't ever seem to miss them.

If I'm not in a hurry, I like to eat my cucumbers while I walk around the front yard and see who else is there and what they're doing. It's interesting to see who loves what: the hunter wasps swarming the culver's root and mountain mint, the little bees on the blue vervain, the big bees on the hoary vervain, the wild senna that just bloomed and no one is paying any attention to. This was all grass a year or two ago, and I'm proud of these new little spaces, even though a bit unkempt and not elegantly designed. They bring me to far corners of my yard and teach me something.