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I may have overscheduled myself for the latter half of July to numb myself a little.

But the effect is quickly wearing off, and I think it’s for the better.

Today is the one-year anniversary of losing my father. One year ago Sunday, I flew home with a bouquet of zinnias and a book on dying in my oversized carry on.

Dad was on hospice by then and I couldn’t bear to be apart from him, knowing he had maybe a month to six weeks to live. My husband was so encouraging on me following my heart and returning to be with him. The timing was confounded by the fact that I hadn’t seen my father-in-law since his beloved wife passed away in January 2020 a day after my birthday and before the world shut down; he had planned a trip to see us in July and was staying for a little over a week. I cut my time with him short by 3 days to go be an extra person at home to help care for dad on hospice.

At the very end, my oldest was holding my Mom’s hand (she reached for his hand at some point during his final hour), she was holding Dad’s hand too, and I was on his other side with the rest of my family him holding his other hand, all linked together. It was so peaceful.

I had been with my dad two other times already that summer. Once, in mid-June, before he went on hospice. During that visit, he was sent to the ER during a palliative appointment due to very low blood pressure. It turned out on top of the cancer that had grown back with a vengeance, an infection from a fall and hearing loss (we think from the antibiotics), he had developed a heart condition, too. He knew then, in June, that the life he’d hoped to recapture had sunset. It was so difficult to see him truly defeated in the hospital bed, shrugging in a “what does it matter” when I proclaimed enthusiastically on the white board (because, remember, he couldn’t hear), that he was being discharge and could go home.

Once he was settled at home, I flew home for a week and a half, and then flew back with my entire family for the Fourth of July. At that time, he felt terrible still, and apologized to me that he wasn’t up for spending time with the grandsons. Still without hearing and very uncomfortable, he had not yet fully decided to go on hospice or not.

This week, one year ago, was a frenzied blur. I’ve done a lot of emotional processing over the months since he passed, but there’s something about the anniversary of being in it with him that is welling up some unprocessed grief. He and I pulled an epic all-nighter when he could no longer stand up on his own and before the hospice bed arrived, because, stubborn old man loved stretching out in the cool basement and that’s where he got stuck until we were able to get a hospital bed setup and call for a medical transport.

Once I was between talks this week, I felt a deep and familiar sadness, one that is unlike any other grief I know, cracking my heart open anew. I am very good at keeping myself busy — you see it everyday in the garden. The disease of busyness keeps us distanced from our hearts. I am keenly aware of this, and plan to work this weekend on not being busy but really trying to be present. I know canning season is a wonderful time in that regard … hours of puttering around the kitchen, and forever marked by the tasks I focused on after we said our goodbyes to him.

Grief does change with time, but it doesn’t ever go away. It takes on new forms. It presents itself in different ways. It often catches you off-guard, tipped off by a sight, smell, feeling, or other sensory experience. You are able to smile and laugh more, tell stories joyfully, but then grief bubbles up and swallows you out of nowhere.

I feel so blessed to have spent so much time with my Dad, but especially his final 5 days on earth. If you were my support circle, you know I was a wreck. I wasn’t sleeping well, I was trying to keep track of his breathing, the dosing of comfort meds, and all the things family members do while their loved one is on hospice in the comfort of their own home. It was worth every tear, every lost hour of sleep.

We will be celebrating him tonight with a remote family dinner. I’ll be wearing my red chuck taylors to Orchestra Hall tonight, where we will hear some Beethoven. Getting to the one year marker is a significant step in moving forward while bringing those we love along with us in spirit, cheering us on in their own ethereal way as we keep on living as best we can.

All this to say, call your people. Hug your people. Talk to your people, say the things you want to say. No matter how hard that might be, I promise you will never regret doing it.

It’s here. The frenzied, manic summer garden life. Screw sleep. It’s for winter. Put down your knitting needles. Those too are for colder days. Forget TV. It’s for dreary and snowy days that are sure to return.

Living and breathing alongside a garden is a test of elasticity. It doesn’t even request your presence, it demands it. The days are long and the tasks are endless. The food is maturing and the fridge is full. It’s a true balancing act deciding each day what to prioritize. It’s sort of awesome. And can also be more than a bit overwhelming.

It is only going to get more intense, more beautiful, and more hectic day in and day out. And it’s exactly what I love about living with a garden.

On the one hand, I love this lifestyle. I am maybe a little ADD (self-diagnosed, but have you watched my Stories?!), and so playing ping pong with gardening tasks leans into my intuitive strength. (Shiny object, go fetch, Meg!). It’s like going to work and having no plan until the plan presents itself.

My weekly tasks from last week didn’t all get done (the ones I list on the MGG homepage). But I got A LOT done last week; I let the garden remind me what needed to get done. I am feeling as productive and energized as my garden.

This is living alongside a garden.

I’m soaking up the sun and long days, and despite feeling a bit under the weather (possibly you-know-what has infected me), as soon as I step into the garden, I do. It’s like an uncontrollable urge to be in the space and to listen to its call and heed its direction. It wills me into action every time. It’s so motivating.

So how do my days form right now? I definitely take inventory everyday. Writing a list is aspirational for me most days, but when I do it works wonders. (I should write that down so I do it more often.) But sometimes you wake up and see an issue that you didn’t anticipate and you have to drop your list and act. There are 5 main areas of focus for me for the next month or two.

Pests are top of mind right now, and will be through sometime in August. The next six weeks is a daily crawl for larva: Colorado potato beetles, three-lined potato beetles (they feed on tomatillos and cape gooseberries), squash vine borer (no better feeling than killing those beautiful moths!), Cabbage white (aka, cabbage moth or imported cabbageworms, though it’s a butterfly!), and soon the Japanese beetles. I’m on the lookout for cucumber beetles but they are suspiciously absent in our garden so far this summer.

After the pest patrol, I water any seeds I may have miraculously sowed recently. Right now that’s the cover crop in the raspberry bed and soon I’ll add more flowers to some open spots as well as another round of sweet corn (third and final sowing!), and my direct-seeded brassica bed.

Sowing seeds in summer is the singular most challenging thing to do — and it’s the singular best thing to do as a gardener, securing extended harvests well beyond tomato season. I am loving hearing from so many of you who are taking steps toward a fall garden this year. It will be a delicious fall for so many of us, and it makes me just delighted to hear from you!

I am not hand-watering anything other than newly planted seeds; the rest of the garden is on drip irrigation that runs every other morning for 20 minutes in each bed. I’ll share more about our irrigation system later this week.

Managing the garden for trellising issues, pruning, and deadheading flowers is a less critical but also necessary task to maintain a visually stunning garden throughout summer. I prune my indeterminate tomatoes every 1-2 weeks, weather dependent. I am currently working on training all my cucurbits up the various trellises to get them going vertical.

Because it’s a burgeoning grocery store, the third major task of the day is harvesting, especially delicate food. So that’s definitely strawberries and to a lesser degree, our peas and lettuce. We are at the tail end of spring head lettuce season and quickly moving into heat tolerant summer lettuce territory — they will be ready to harvest in another week or two.

Amid and between and during these tasks, I am working to keep my phone away from my hands and really immerse myself in the sheer joy and wonder of the garden, the seeds we sow, the environment all around us. The hoverflies are doing their typical June thing, reproducing by the thousands in our garden — they are an aphid-eating machine in larval form, and they are so tiny you’d miss them if you didn’t know I’m making friends with this adorable robin who’s sort of taken up residence in the garden. It has a ruffled feather and a few nights ago we watched and waited while it chipped away at the ripest, most beautiful strawberry in the blueberry bed. The birds are definitely thirsty right now, so providing water outside the garden is a great way to deter this kind of snacking — but we grow enough to share, so I don’t worry. Unless this robin brings their friends, families, and friends of family … then we will have a problem.

I keep finding space amid plantings to interplant. It’s a good reminder to scan your gardens for spaces to pair with the right plants.

As I walked around the garden with my hardened off tray of Brussels, sprouts, summer cabbage + broccoli, basil, dill, beets, and lettuce, I focused first on the long-season vegetables. The Brussels sprouts will root down and be in place until November in the garden, assuming the ground doesn’t start to freeze up before then (time will tell). Interplanted between the Brussels sprouts, which are generously spaced between 24-30” on center, I dropped some of the heat tolerant lettuce in between, knowing it will mature quickly and before the sprouts really take hold.

5 Brussels sprouts and 8 heat tolerant lettuce in a roughly 4-x6 foot space.

As I shared in my Instagram stories last week, some of my softneck garlic was looking very sad and wilting. Its never happened to me, and I pulled it all this weekend. I saw this gap as an opportunity to plop something into those empty spaces. Beet seedlings turned out to be the most logical vegetable with it’s modest leaf area and shorter stature than my garlic, which is well on its way to producing scapes. I’ve never interplanted my garlic before, but I’ve also never had gaps this large in my garlic bed, either. So this was a new way for me to interplant, and I’m looking forward to watching how it unfolds over the next 6 weeks or so.

My other favorite interplanting vegetable is radishes. They rarely get their own square footage here, save larger daikon and watermelon types. I wanted to add one more row of quick radishes for late June meals, so decided to saddle up on the outside of my first succession of bush beans, which already has two rows of radishes between the rows that are nearing maturity. Nearby this seeding are zinnia and nasturtium but again, I believe there will be plenty of time before these canopies close for the quick radishes to plump and swell.

My goal is always a “closed canopy” as the interplantings near maturity. This one is making my heart sing. Bush beans sowed 18” apart with radishes sowed in between on same day.

My very favorite new to me interplanting this spring was with my bunching onions. I decided to plant them in, well, bunches! It makes them a quick harvest, grabbing a bundle as needed for suppers. I chose to interplant them with our earliest brassica bed and you guys, it’s been the greatest joy to watch them spike up. Visual interest is so important in our food gardens, and this is truly my new favorite thing!

The interplanted spring onions add an undeniable depth and interest to this spring succession, a planting strategy I will carry forward indefinitely.

The name of the game is mixing maturation rates and stature in a way that the interplantings can thrive in the same space. Are you trying any new interplantings this season?