After seeing the garlic crop up close—by weeding for three hours—I can say it looks quite good. Most of the leaves are still green which means it is not quite ready. It won’t be long.

As summer approaches I am ready to turn the page on the garden to focus on cooking, writing, and property maintenance.

I often wake in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep. Typically, I need a drink of water and if my stomach is growling, I have a snack. This day, the early morning snack was toasted bread with pesto. I typically eat mass-produced loaves from a Brownberry factory. The pesto was made with basil and garlic scapes from the garden. After reading an hour, I went back to bed and slept through the rest of the night.

We had a bunch of bananas nearing end of life so I made smoothies and some vegan banana bread. I used two bananas in the smoothie along with skim milk, Greek yogurt, powdered peanut butter, five frozen strawberries, some cooked pumpkin, and a large kale leaf. It made two servings so I jarred one and put it in the refrigerator for the next day. The banana bread will last the rest of the week.

The sky was clear, cool, and windy on Tuesday. Summer outdoors life as good as it gets. Sometimes we have to step back and take it all in.