I finally got a chance to see one of my favorite bands live a few weeks ago—Bon Iver played an incredible set on a beautiful evening at the Walker Art Center. It took me a long time to warm up to the newest album; but it’s now indelibly in my heart along with the first two. So as I’m reading awful news headlines, or working in my August garden, I sometimes find that first track running through my head—It Might Be Over Soon. But not necessarily in a bad way, I guess? Everything has a season.

Even Japanese beetles have a season, and it will be over soon. Apparently I’m not the only one suffering—our cool (but not cold), wet spring meant a bumper crop of beetles for Minnesotans. So, if you have foliage that looks like my poor grapevine above, there’s a good chance you have these bugs (look on the under side the leaf). My whole family has been hunting them every morning and evening. We simply carry around little containers of soapy water and brush them off the leaf and into the water. It’s not hard or even gross; they die pretty quickly.

Here you have a collection of dead Japanese beetles along with two of the last grapevine beetles. Our grapevines had a hard year. Please, if you see Japanese beetles try and get over the gross out factor and TAKE THEM OUT. You will thank yourself next year.

My tomatoes were a bit late this year—partially because I grew only large ones. I didn’t harvest my first until July 29 or 30. Depending on when we get our first frost, this is going to be a very short tomato season. But they’re coming so fast now that I made a big batch of sauce to use them up—I use a recipe from Trout Caviar’s excellent cookbook for oven-roasted tomatoes, then I just blend them up with the immersion blender and freeze in half-pints. This becomes pizza or pasta sauce base in the winter.

The reason for my big tomato harvest: my squirrel proof tomato fortress, installed in May. This thing is wonderful. When Adam built it, we had a small debate over whether to make something just for the tomatoes or whether to make something bigger for the entire garden, and I am not sure we chose correctly. I have beautiful cucumber vines climbing the trellis just to the left of the tomato cage, and I have harvested precisely 2 tiny cucumbers from it—squirrels have eaten nearly 100% of my cucumber harvest. I have some leftover chicken wire and I’m going to see what I can do with it this afternoon.

Summer vacation for my teacher husband and kids will also be over soon. Adam’s been very productive; he’s almost finished with a massive landscaping project of brick paths all over the yard. Walking out to the garden in my slippers can now legitimately be a thing. He also made this raised strawberry bed. Our strawberries were overrun with weeds, and the size and shape of the bed made it annoyingly difficult to maintain. We carefully dug up the strawberry plants, built this, filled the bottom half with compost, then added soil and replanted the strawberries. A week or two later we had pumpkins sprouting, from the compost. I decided to let three of them grow, just to see what happens. If we have a late frost I could end up getting a pumpkin or two!

Here’s another angle. I love all the curved intersections on these paths.

This view hints as to what he has in the works for 2018: a gate! He’s going to complete this path to the door of my garden shed, then replace this chain link fence with a wood fence and gate. The garden will be 10 steps from the kitchen instead of 60. I may never walk around the north end of my house again. He is also going to add a few arches at certain intersections, based on what I found in my friend Marianna’s garden. Arches give such a nice effect.

My peppers also got going a little late and are now making up for it with great quantities. Trying to pickle as many as I can, but everyone’s eating them as fast as I pickle them.

I’m also drying some herbs. Of course basil (right) and parsley (middle left) are not as good dried as fresh, but I have tons and they’ll just go to waste otherwise.

I should get a few ground cherries for the first time this year, but less than I hoped for because the spot is shadier than I first realized when I planted them early this spring.

I love the contrast that these blue bachelors’ buttons give to my brown-eyed susans. They were some orphan plants that I got for free and just planted very randomly with little thought, so what a happy surprise that they’re thriving. Hopefully they’ll reseed and come back next year.

Over in the boulevard, several of these suddenly popped up last year out of nowhere. I suspect their seeds were in some purchased wood mulch. Last year I thought they were weeds and just pulled them all—they do look a bit like creeping bellflower. After I pulled them I figured it out. They’re in the same family—Campanulaceae (Bellflower) but these are American Bellflower, Campanula Americana, a native! And they seem to be just as, erm, vigorous as their invasive cousin—they came back readily this year despite my pulling nearly all of them last year. I’m keeping an eye on them for now.

Here’s a bumble on my anise hyssop. For several years I had a wonderful anise hyssop patch in the back yard, and suddenly early this spring they all got eaten to the ground by some bug. I moved in some volunteers from elsewhere in the yard, and those got eaten too. So I dug up even more volunteers (are you sensing a theme with anise hyssop?) from my community garden plot and added them in a completely different area of the yard, and they’re doing fine. I’m going to wait another year or two before planting them again in the back. Fortunately they’re very versatile in their soil and light requirements—and they are absolutely covered with bees right now. I also dry these leaves/flowers for tea.

That was three blue or purple flowers in a row, but the reality is the majority of my flowers are yellow this time of year. These early sunflowers are VERY vigorous and are taking over much of my prairie boulevard.

Summer might be over soon, so it’s time to get out there and enjoy it while we can.