On Monday, I finished planting all the gardens. EVERYTHING IS IN! My last task was to plant a bed of “Elfin” Thyme down on the spot where we tore down the old house last fall. As a planted this spiral of baby Thymes, I imagined the plants filling in to form a solid bed of magenta blossoms and humming honeybees.

As the last plant was dug in, I was happy to see rain clouds hovering to the southeast and with this promise of precipitation, I went home to wait for this much needed rain which fell gently all yesterday.

So yesterday was a rest from gardening. It was a treat to have a day in which I had no role in the gardens but as observer. A mini break holiday before other jobs of summer call. A chance to wander in the soggy gardens and realize that while I used to have a lot of opinions about peonies back in my twenties, now I love them all.

I even love the bomb types that, somehow, I found over the top earlier in my life as a gardener.

Tomorrow it will be time to begin projects like deadheading all the lilacs, weeding the blueberries, and other jobs that never got done in April and May. But yesterday and today I just enjoyed the early roses and other June beauties.

I am a lucky woman.