I brought my coffee outside just as the sun was coming up over the horizon, the land still shadowed and dim. I moved my chair a little and it spooked a pile of sleeping baby raccoons beneath the bird feeder. The mama started with a jump and one by one, a sleepy little ball of fur peeled off the pile, not sure where to go. Their ringed faces looked at me with curiosity. Mama came back and retrieved them all and she and five babies waddled off. Oh my heart. What joy to live amongst other creatures. (We’ll need to get a real sturdy chicken coop!)

Every year is different in a garden. The images of flowing rows of perfect plants are for the good years. Some years are damp and cool, some hot with air filled with wildfire smoke. Some have hoards of grasshoppers, and the next will be a utopia of gardening luck! We have to accept that some years are tougher than others, but to be a gardener is to have hope.

In this week’s “Restoring our Land,” we have more birds, slightly less grasshoppers. Some tomatoes are forming on the vines and the squash plants are doubling their size but will likely not make it to the end of the season to fruit. Potatoes are coming up! The yard is greener. Wasps buzz by as we walk through the paths of our mini-farm. Drunken bumble bees are starting to appear. Birds of all sorts. Beautiful deer, fuzzy raccoons. The elderberry succumbed to the grasshoppers, the hawthorn looks great.

Next year will be better on Lost & Found Farm. I am astounded at the difference between our first season on our last farm down a few towns (a harsher climate there) and our first season here! But that is how nature works. I will still sit outdoors with my coffee and enjoy the great beauty of this area whilst cheering on the tomatoes.