Bob and I had been gone all week visiting my brother, James, in Massachusetts for his birthday. I had just turned 70 and Jamie was turning 59.

The three of us spent two nights on South Yarmouth in the wake of Hurricane Beryl. We enjoyed some refreshing barefoot beach time and James went for a short swim.

And then James drove us inland to celebrate his birthday with pizza, cake, and ice cream at his new home outside of Boston where we were joined by his stepdaughter and her family.

Christina and Lou’s seven kids bounced around Jamie’s lush lawn, taking turns on the swing between bites of pizza at the picnic table. No one threw up.

This was the best pizza I’d eaten in years. It had a thin, slightly salty, crispy, yet foldable crust, with blackened dough blisters, a spicy sauce, and not too much cheese. In other words, it was New York style pizza like we used to get on our birthdays from Freddie’s in West Long Branch, New Jersey.

No birthday is complete without cake and ice cream, so we did that, too.

~*~

Bob and I returned home to discover deer tracks in the garden. They had taken out a pepper plant and decimated the edamame. I tightened the clothesline I’d strung above the four-foot livestock fence in a lame attempt to fend off another garden attack, made dinner, and we went to bed and fell asleep wondering how we were going to solve our deer problem.

Bob found her the next morning, a lactating doe that had been hit by a Ford truck during the night. Problem solved. We didn’t take her picture out of respect for the dead. After picking the big plastic “R” and other truck parts out of the grass, we went inside and waited for the clean up crew.

Soon enough the vultures began to arrive. Lyle and Carrie had watched a breeding pair of Black vultures raise two chicks at their place half a mile away and we were pretty sure a group of four who were nearly always together were the same family. We were thrilled to have them at our place and be able to share our friends’ experience.

About three days in, the intermittent whiff of rot began spoiling our summer afternoon spa time. But it was short-lived—in this heat, roadkill decomposes at an accelerated pace—and a couple of days later we resumed our refreshing cold water (88°) soaks.

Although the family of four birds were the same size, we could tell the youngsters from their parents by the baby fluff around their heads and necks.

I confess that Black vultures are among my top three favorite birds along with Great blue herons and Carolina wrens.

Unlike other birds, vultures spend a lot of time standing around. They don’t have to flit about chasing bugs or searching for seeds, worrying about getting picked off by cats and hawks. Vultures are so big, they don’t worry about much of anything. They waddled up near the garden to watch Bob work, as interested in us as we were in them.

We learned that when vultures blink, they look like sharks.

Bob and I were struck by their affection towards each other and were reminded of our time in Massachusetts with Jamie and family.

Family is where you find it. Sometimes you might have to board an airplane to see them. Sometimes family comes to you after a deer gets hit on the Moncure Pittsboro Road. Either way, families make life more interesting by reminding us that we were all young once and that we are all hurtling through space on the same planet, doing our best to stay happy and fed.

Camille has put a lot of work, love, and intention into this garden next to our front door. It is now mostly pollinator friendly perennials – Sweet William, Miniature Dahlias, Echinaceas, Butterfly Weed, Milkweed, Gladiolus, Purple Tradescantia, and some remnant Mondo Grass.

We wandered out after dinner to have a look at what was happening in our little slice of the world.

A wheel bug nymph and carpenter bee checking each other out.

Echinaceas are great! So many colors, so dependable on their spring return. Each one is like a firework caught in time.

Retirement is great! I highly recommend it. Unless you’re a bee.

Bob started tiny Columbine seedlings under lights more than a year ago and when they were strong enough, I planted them in an amended garden along our east-facing fence. They seemed to like that spot over the winter, blessed with the morning sun, and now they delight us with their showy blooms.

The low humidity lures me into the garden with my camera where I see ripening pimento peppers, perfect for roasting. I will slice their sweet, tender flesh into strips. Some will find their way into this week’s menu with plenty to freeze. Come winter, these roasted pimentos will add summer joy to thick stews and sauces.

The long, horn-shaped Corno di Toros are sweet and tangy, their skin and flesh thinner than the Pimentos. We eat most of these real-time in salads and stir fries, but I also freeze some for future burritos.

The soybeans bulge inside their fuzzy pods. These are best eaten fresh, their pods boiled in heavily-salted water. We sit s on the back porch and squeeze the plump beans into our slobbering mouths.

It has not been a prolific okra year because we lost some plants to pests. Their bold lines contrast nicely with the nearby tangle of tomato vines.

Bob is leaving the long-necked Tahitian Melons on the vine to sweeten with the cold weather ahead.

The figs are finally slowing down, but it was a race to keep up with them a few weeks ago when I was plucking two to three pounds a day. I made about six pounds into jam and gave most of that away, borrowed Shelley’s dehydrator and dried a few pounds to use in granola, made several small pans of fig crisp and froze enough for another eight pans. What ripens now is for eating in-hand beside the tree, and for the birds, ants, wasps, and turtles.

The Paw Paws mainly feed critters, although Bob will bring in a few and eat them. I love their tropical vibe but not their taste and texture.

Several years ago, I brought home a small potted, irresistible red flower and planted it in the kitchen garden. Bob fell in love with it, so we took cuttings and rooted them in glass jars over the winter to plant out again after the last frost. It seems like a hassle, but I have not found this color impatiens anywhere else, and we simply must have it.

Our hydrangeas, which came with the house, were not prolific this year and I worry that I mis-pruned them last February. They start out blue and fade to purple-pink on this end of summer. Although I sometimes cut them for indoor flowers, they rarely last a day in the vase.

We brought home passion fruit seeds from Mary Beth and Brandon’s farm a couple of years ago and started a perennial vine on our west fence. I’m not sure what needs to happen to make it bear fruit, but I am happy with the vine and tropical-looking flowers.

For the first time in years, I’m excited about the end of summer. When I heard anyone say they longed for sweater weather, my mouth would twist in an attempt to keep my thoughts to myself. Summer is my jam, I’d think. I’m a spoiled, tropical girl. Also, I was never a sweater gal, choosing instead to cover my bare arms with fleece and denim.

I bought my first cardigan a few years ago and now have three in our hall closet, waiting for their time to shine. Times change. We change. It’s been nearly ten years since I last lived in the tropics and I am adapting to the rhythms of the four seasons. I look forward to pimento-rich fall dishes, fig crisp, and sweet, roasted butternut squash, and to clipping a few pieces of red impatiens for Bob to keep alive until next spring.

Day after day, Bob and I harvest, cook, mow, trim, and weed together. This is what our dual retirement looks like: morning workouts, daily trips to the garden, languid afternoons, dinner on the back porch, an hour of Roku entertainment, showers in our magnificent new bathroom, and then to bed with our books.

It is a gorgeous day—the humidity is way down to 55—but by 11:00, my thoughts about going for a walk have evaporated. The A/C powered into our Sunday morning silence at 7:30, and Bob and I have already pulled in two and a half pounds of figs. We also brought in a respectable number of cucumbers, peppers, and tomatoes.

I’m sitting on the back porch with my pink notebook, thinking of all the things I don’t want to do. I keep telling myself, “You don’t have to do anything; it’s Sunday,” and, “You’re retired! Go lay in the hammock.”

At dinner last night, when I announced, “Tomorrow’s my day off,” Bob rocked back in his chair and said, “Sure.”

“Just you wait and see,” I said.

So, I will sit and write until I begin to sweat, and then I will do some yoga, roast the pimentos and skin and deseed the tomatoes. I will kill some fire ants underneath our chestnut tree with the hot tomato water. These are easy things, everyday things, like brushing my teeth. Not at all a Sunday Day Off Violation.

What I won’t do, is wash the bedroom windows, even though I saw their cloudiness when I opened the blinds before climbing back into bed this morning. My Suzy Homemaker voice whispered, But these are the last ones—you’ve done all the others—and you have all day.

Today I will resist that bad little voice. Today I will play, whatever that looks like. I’ve got something to prove. I’ll lay in the hammock and talk on the phone. I may take out my sketch pad or read another chapter of The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek.

Bob busies himself with the orchids, then comes outside to say hello. I smile up from my notebook scribbles, hoping he’s proud of me for sitting here under the shade of the crepe myrtle in my cotton shift this far into the day. He harvests sweet pears, makes himself something to eat, washes dishes, plays some Wingspan, then does some reading. Later, he will sugar the pickles that he soaked in vinegar overnight and air fry a pound of teriyaki tofu.

When the temperature reaches 85°, I retreat inside to do tomatoes and peppers. I return to my rocking chair an hour later with soup and cheese toast. I admire the neon light shining through the myrtle leaves and the crisp, dark green of the forest fringe beyond. I put down my bowl and plate and stare at a Ruby Throat on his perch, guarding the hummingbird feeder. Time is paralyzed, swollen and ripe, hanging like a fat, red fig.

Canada is on fire. The smoke drifts south, and when it reaches the North Carolina Piedmont, I feel like I’m breathing with one lung. I check my right nostril, then my left, to see if one is clogged. Nope.

Bob and I took the threat of Global Warming seriously twenty years ago. We threw ourselves into the recycling movement, tried not to buy too much new stuff, did our best to use and reuse, started using biodiesel, and stopped eating meat. Yet we continued—with some guilt—to fill bags of household trash destined for the landfill.

We recently bought his and hers Teslas, complete with chargers, and discussed installing solar panels to offset our driving habit. We grow some of our food, seldom eat out, and rarely buy new clothes.

But it’s hard to feel complacent when the world’s on fire. All the predictions are coming true: the super tornadoes, monster storms, and now a heat wave sweeping across the lower United States.

I watch a young hummingbird—tiny and dark-headed—dip its beak into the center of the metal flower, its miniature toes curled around the perch. I count three this year: an adult male, a long-torsoed female, and this one youngster. They must be a family, yet they body slam each other all through the adjacent air space Star Wars style.

How long before our politicians agree to make good on their climate change promises? How much longer can I use our hummingbird feeders as a distraction?

Two maxims fight for attention in my brain:
“If you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem,” and
“Stay in the now.”

I was an activist in my forties and fifties. Now, pushing seventy, I’ve passed the baton. I realize that my “simple” life puts more strain on the planet than the average world citizen’s life does—as an American, I have more resources at my disposal—but I will try not to guilt myself over this. I’ve decided to let the little birds hypnotize me, and allow the summer heat to lull me into a torpor. I will slow my footfalls to match my lungs.

I hear the Wood thrush warble its lovely song from a few trees away, perhaps one of our majestic Willow Oaks. Our Evening primrose blossoms—creamy yellow—are still open. It’s only 66° and the sun has not yet cleared the trees to brush them closed with its hot breath. The air smells richly alive. I can feel its moisture on my tanned arms. I lean back and let summer take me.

You read that they’ll come through again when the weather cools, lay their eggs on the same plants they grew fat upon as caterpillars, and that those new butterflies will migrate south and back north to start the cycle over again next spring.

The azaleas burst open in early April, shortly after the daffodils.

Next come the irises. Now we have the three primary colors: blue, yellow, and red.

More yellow as the collards bolt. They’ve had enough of winter and are ready to concede to a new generation by putting forth seed. Rather than rip them out, we left them standing to feed a squadron of hungry spring bees.

Then the peonies in the third week of April, as per usual.

Meanwhile inside, our garden starts yearn to join the burgeoning riot. But we made them wait until we thought all danger of frost was behind us. Or mostly behind us. This year we played the odds and planted them out on April 11—a bit ahead of schedule—and bit our nails when the temperatures dipped a couple of weeks later.

We are in the midst of a renovation project to repair old water damage to our floors and including a complete overhaul of our master bathroom. Come to find out, there is only an inch or so of plywood between the bottom of my feet and an abyss.

I’m not sure whether this critter emerged from the abyss or made its way in from outside, but it was unusual and begged me to take a photo.

Bob’s beloved plant shelf is equally entertaining with a blooming venus flytrap clamoring for attention among the riot of African violets and orchids.

Back outdoors, the potatoes we planted on St. Patrick’s Day are coming along nicely.

As are the beets we planted last fall.

These are fava beans. We plant in the fall and harvest in the spring. Flowers mean bean pods will soon be setting on. They smell as pretty as they look.

A male cardinal clings to the white plastic window edging outside our bedroom window. He believes he has seen a rival, a cardinal that looks a lot like himself, someone who must be fought for the privilege of residing in his chosen locale. Someone who may try and breed the female cardinal he seeks to woo.

Day after day, the cardinal beat against the window, mussing up his feathers and leaving beak streaks across the glass. Hearing that a photo of a human might dissuade the bird, we taped one of Bob to the glass. It had no effect. The bird was just as determined to fight his rival to the death.

The red warrior eventually disappeared and we took down the picture. I have yet to wash the window, but have picked the pieces of broken plastic from the lawn. Someone said they’ll beat themselves to death and I wonder if that’s what finally made him stop.

We who grew up in the golden age of Disney’s Bambi and Snow White idolize nature. We like to think the animals wish each other the best and all get along. I catch myself wishing humans would learn to get along, too. I’m disappointed by human selfishness, war, and greed, and I cluck my tongue at underhanded politics that remind me of schoolyard bullying.

But it turns out animals are not as nice as I want to believe and humans are no more humane than the animals. I’d hoped for better, but there it is. We can be kind and selfless on occasion, but in general, as a species, we are not nice.

Oopsy, another bird doing its best to deter someone from passing along their DNA. This time it is a bluebird trying to oust a pair of nesting chickadees. Happily, the bluebird gave up and the chickadees hatched a brood of gape-mouthed nestlings.

Yet another bird, this one an eastern phoebe, sits atop its nest in our pole barn where we park our cars. One of its chicks begs for food at her feet. We love to watch them fly in and out, but do not love having to wash the bird shit from our cars. As far as we know, there have been no territorial disputes.

More breeding action is happening in the frog pond outside our guest room where we are holed up until our renovation project is complete. There are four frogs in this photo. Can you spot them all?

We listen to their throaty love language all through the night. Hopefully, they have learned to share the love pond with equanimity. If you know different, I don’t want to hear it.

Fragrant Sweet William, started from seed under lights last year. They fluffed out nice and green and stayed green all winter, holding their own against the black-eyed Susans and other ne’re do wells. But they did not show their true colors until this year. I hear they will pass the torch at the end of the year and we’ll have to start another batch. Until then, we’ll breath easy and wish them well.

A friend of hers, she tells me, a woman in her seventies who remembers the past clearly, calls them “occasional tables,” because as her mother used to say, “Occasionally, you need a table.”

I explain my motives for the interview—a peri-pandemic interest in self-sufficiency and isolation survival techniques—and toss out my first question.

What are you growing in your garden?

She puts down her glass and covers it with a sour cream container lid. “Let’s go look!” she calls from the bottom of the ladder. “You can bring your lemonade if you want. Here, hand it to me.”

~*~

We leave the shade and walk the perimeter of an old swimming pool. “My husband named this ‘The Sunken Gardens of Moncure,’” she says

I chuckle. “Your husband has a good sense of humor.”

“Indeed he does. And a formidable education.”

She points out the potatoes, already three feet tall. “The ones with the white blooms are German Butterballs, the pinks are Red Thumbs, and the purples are Huckleberry Golds.”

She shows me the lettuce, the peppers, the tomatoes, the asparagus, the beets, and tiny, fat-leafed seedlings: okra, peanuts, and edamame.

“We’ve got fifteen totes outside the pool,” she says and shows me more Huckleberries and some Yukon Golds. We also look at her garlic, onions, carrots, leeks, tomatillos, and a fava beans. A frog chirps, and we hear a rooster howl through the woods. She takes my glass and climbs back up to the treehouse using one hand.

I’m a sweaty mess, but she seems oddly refreshed. She hesitates before taking a seat. “Sitting isn’t my thing,” she says, apologetically. A mosquito buzzes my left ear but does not land. I’ll have to shower as soon as I get home.

I noticed leaves on your empty plots.

“Yes. I rake them in the fall and dump them on the pool beds. They don’t affect the plants, but they keep the weeds away.”

Indeed, I did not see any weeds.

How much of what you eat comes from your garden?

“Oh gosh. Five to ten percent? We also subscribe to a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and shop the Farmers’ Markets, so local produce accounts for nearly all our vegetable intake. And soon, we’ll be pulling up potatoes, so there’ll be some carbs.

“But protein, no. We don’t grow wheat or beans —except for favas and edamame—and Bob has started eating fish. Our neighbors often give us eggs, and I bake bread. And, we buy far-away grapes, apples, citrus, cheese, tortillas, chocolate, and coffee.”

Hmmm. Hardly seems worth the trouble. How many hours a week would you say you work in the Sunken Gardens?

She laughs. “I think this all the time. So yeah, I probably average seven hours a week in the garden per se, and roughly equal time at the kitchen counter, turning produce into food. But hey, I’m retired, it gets me outside, and I don’t have to go to a therapist or supplement with Vitamin D.”

Do you also manage the flower beds? I say without thinking, and when she stands up, I say, “But let’s look at those on my way out.”

Tell me more about the emotional benefits of growing some of your food.

”Oh gosh. Well, as I mentioned—no therapy bills. I believe that outside time with a purpose satisfies an innate need. As civilized people, we spend far too much time indoors surrounded by the hum of our appliances—entertaining our brains with our screens—and way too close to the refrigerator.

“Out here, I am forced to sync with natural rhythms. I tune in to the neighborhood sounds: the bird song, the weather patterns. I think random thoughts that build like clouds until they burst into a storm of ideas. It’s cathartic.”

She is gushing now.

“I like how hard my body gets in the summer. I feel lean and bronzed. I can shovel compost and fork mulch for hours. And the food! Every mouthful bursting with just-picked enzymes. Not to mention the bragging rights, the immense sense of self-sufficiency, that I-can-do-anything feeling.”

Her face reddens beneath her tan.

Can I see your kitchen? I say, angling for some air conditioning.

“Of course!” She moves our empty glasses to the edge of the deck, climbs down, and reaches up for them. Inside the house, I see she has pulled a bag of last year’s edamame from the freezer. She had meant to bring me in here all along, just wanted me to get warm enough to fully appreciate the cool air.

She picks up the blue-handled knife and hesitates before slicing this perfect orb in half. It feels like a beheading, or the end of an era. She quarters it and cuts a notch away from each piece at the stem end.

Pulling down two monkey dishes, she fills them with slices. She puts a wedge into her mouth, and using her tongue to trap it between her molars, begins to mash it up. The flavor is magnificent.

She goes to the window and looks out at the tree that bore this perfect fruit, golden leaves at its feet, branches naked and sprawling. Exposed. She looks away in embarrassment. Didn’t those branches have leaves a few weeks ago? How we change from one season to the next.

Searching her memory, she finds images from the day her husband — the man who promised to grow old with her when their hair was still thick and dark — planted this tree. She finds an impression of him digging the hole, and tries to remember helping him place the sapling, gently, into that hole.

It occurs to her that humans have only one spring, one summer, one fall, and if they’re lucky — or not, depending on your perspective — one winter. Unlike the trees, humans do not drop their leaves and grow back new ones. Instead, they continue down the same linear path from cradle to grave.

She sets the other dish next to her partner and watches him reach for this last slice of summer. “Is it spring yet?” he asks on cold mornings. “I hate winter,” she says, tugging on a pair of black fleece loungers.