Solstice

[Billy]

So we are met again at the long and the short of it. Here's wishing you in the global south a fecund year in which your labor is amply rewarded, and may your trials be few. I hope your hours of winter planning will adorn many a dinner table with many colors, smells and tastes. In a few scant weeks, some of you will begin the germination of this years crops.

Rebirth for you, and the harvesting of what we've sown for us.

Good luck.

"The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied. They always look forward to doing something better than they have ever done before."

- Vita Sackville-West

[Higgs Boson]

I always dread the summer Solstice because it means that the days will be getting shorter. I HATE the early dark; I fold up like a flower when the sun goes down. The ideal would be to go to the other side of the world for half the year. But no...

Crop-wise, I lost a full month when I was out of the country in early Spring, when I would normally be putting in crops. After too much travel and a lot of fatigue, I finally got my act together, but everything will be late this year. Fortunately we have a long growing season. If all goes well, there will be lots of corn and cucumbers, and maybe those young watermelon and cantaloupe plants will produce fruit.

I picked the first yellow wax beans yesterday. MOST productive plants I have ever hard. They roared up out of the seeds and began producing like demons. Last year, almost zip. Go figure.

Dwarf orange is -- sssssshhhh - I don't want the jealous gods to hear

-- finally producing! This is the first of at least 3 previous tries which went nowhere. So I'm hoping that those lovely little green spheres will get bigger and bigger and bigger, till about January, there will be orange FRUIT!