Late summer beauties

"It's a shark," my younger friend said, as we stood in the back yard of a Jamaican colleague who graciously and generously invited us to share in the bounty of his marvelous huerto, and we tried to describe the shapes of the cumulus clouds that rolled lazily by on the summer-blue sky.

Both my friend and I left our colleague's lovely home with grocery bags full of a late summer harvest of produce and herbs (carrots freshly pulled from the soil, cabbages cut from their gigantic elephant-eared plants, cucumbers, zucchini, basil, rosemary, thyme and lavender) and a recipe for cooking callaloo, a Caribbean green similar to spinach but much tastier.

His immense vegetable garden is impressive not only because it's so well laid out and cared for but because of the many varieties of planted goodies it offers up from the earth. After dropping off my friend, who was already planning on making good use of her pumpkin-sized head of cabbage, I came home and promptly cooked up the callaloo as instructed and my husband and I had a little feast and discovered a brand new food source. A city girl who knew next to nothing about vegetable gardening, or where food actually comes from, I am now planning my own fully stocked huerto for next year and today received the seed packets for growing arugula and baby spinach for a fall harvest. I sure have come a long way since I arrived in Ohio eight years ago.

Late summer is one of my favorite times here, not only because of the gifts the earth gives us each time, like a knowing lover eager to please, but also because of the warm, humid days, and even because of the atonal song of the cicadas (so long as one doesn't actually fly near me). This summer has warmed up considerably in the past few days, and while the locals complain that the summer was "so good" because it has been a cooler summer, I'm in my element in the heat. At least, on those days, I get a feeling of belonging that eludes me on all the other cool or cold or frigid days.

Tonight, the fourth? fifth? peach cobbler of the season is cooling in the kitchen, and some Ohio-grown chicken awaits in the refrigerator for me to season it with the recently acquired lavender. This weekend, I will make a visit to an orchard to stock up on apples so I can have an apple pie ready for my father who, along with my mother, arrives next week (God willing) for a long-awaited visit.

My prediction is that my father will sit himself in the large, comfy chair overlooking the front of the house in our "reading room," and will only get up for meals and sleep time, and that my mother will sit herself on the deck to will be hypnotized by all the trees that crowd our now large yard.

Meanwhile, Lizzy doesnt' know it but she's looking forward to meeting two more members of her ever-increasing family, having met her other grandparents last weekend, when they came up from West Virginia for a short visit to see the new house. We attended her first obedience class last night and she acquitted herself honorably, learning the "sit" and "down" commands pretty readily (as long as I have a treat in hand, of course). Now I have to work on "stay," "leave it," and "aquí" my command for having her come to me. Those are going to take a lot longer, I have a feeling.

Thus, as this nicest of summers (so far) crawls unwillingly, if inevitably, to its end, I'm still taking advantage of every single moment so that, when it is all over and I'm back in the hustle and bustle, I can say, truthfully and without apology, that this was a great summer.