Saturday morning I was back to my Fort Atkinson pilgrimage, driving east from Madison to see Farmer Peggy and buy some flowers – but also to watch our edge of the moraine roll into the morning sky. The silver mist from a cool night lingered in the soy bean oceans – and gold is sweeping the millions of spires of corn – surely millions – shivering with pollen and green.

And here now, the entire summer is in one place. My guilty apples, purloined from a tree behind the yoga studio. Rampant cosmos, hyacinth bean blossoms and geranium-red nasturtium from my patch at the community garden. From Peggy, the Queens of Summer – Lisianthus and Sunflower – surrounded with sparkles of goldenrod, garlic, coneflower and dill. And the eggshell in softest blue, hatched it’s summer wondering and grew into a life of a garden. I’m so thankful for all its surprises.

Saturday was a work day at my community garden plot – and so I was weeding at 8 am, instead of buying corn and flowers in Fort Atkinson. I pounced on the white asters from the only flower seller who showed up at the West Side Market by 7 am. All the other flowers here came from the garden. The cosmos and hyacinth beans I grew; the rudbeckia plants I weeded in the pollinator garden, and therefor earned a few of their lush, unruly stems.

The plots are full of towering tomatoes and thick rows of beans and everywhere the huge leaves of Curcubits (squashes) covering the ground by inches every day. One gardener cleared out her cauliflowers to make room for the rampaging pumpkin vines taking over her plot. Another was determined to organize the shed. A thankless task, but you know how that feels, don’t you? Sometimes you just want to organize things, and nothing else will do.

My cosmos are – well – massive shrubs. Hidden by the net of fern-like foliage, the main stems of a few plants criss cross each other on the ground, heavy with their own success and as thick around as small branches. Others have stretched and strived between these giants, and made their long-necked way toward the sun. I guess I should have thinned the seedlings out a little more (laughs and rolls eyes sarcastically).

But you know, any success in the garden still comes as a total surprise. I didn’t really think I’d have even one flower, never mind a mini-forest encroaching across the path and into the tomatoes next door. “Screw you and your low expectations,” say the Cosmos in their pink fairy-tale voices. “We came to grow. Get out of our way.”

We lined up for peaches and corn under cool, milky skies over the Fort Atkinson farmer’s market.  Farmer Peggy and I agreed a little wistfully that the lisianthus have almost run their course, overtaken by sunflowers and other late-summer heroes. The overcast light lingered into today, clouds on the brink of rain that never gained enough momentum to actually fall.  The house cooled off at last, welcoming every morsel of breeze that could find an open window.

I’m happy because I rearranged some furniture and washed the kitchen floor – and for dinner had the best tomatoes I’ve maybe ever eaten.  Oh, and the corn, full of butter and salt.  Think about that for a minute, why don’t ya?

I can’t rush anymore, towards whatever ambition was racing through me like fire through paper.  Even the flowers take their time, making and unmaking, considering and consenting.  Maybe I will find a picture, maybe I won’t.  It’s only the pleasure I want now – the time spent seeing what happens.  I don’t know if anyone else will ever see what I see.

Can you believe I get to cut and arrange flowers in a vase and take a picture of them – every week?  How did I get so lucky?

The shapes of trees are so distinct in glaring summer sun – even at 7:30 am – I imagine I can see every leaf, no matter how far away, as I drive out to the farmer’s market.

This Saturday morning, though, the trees’ silhouettes melted in the moist August haze, shadowless layers of blackened green, linking the earth and the milky grey sky. Farther down the road, the soft bumps of brighter hills and groves rose like far away mountain ranges. The ditches are white with tangles of Queen Ann’s Lace, and bright purple asters are starting to shine. Summer in its flurry – but getting ready to hand off soon.

There’s corn this week, and the tomatoes are run amok. The dark red wash on the viburnum leaves and berries hints at autumn. Lisianthus keeps coming, in all her ruffles and gingerly folds. Why ever would you say “no?” to such a fun party girl? It rained too hard this morning for me to get into my community plot – but I know the cosmos are there, taking over everything.

On Friday the Thrift Gods, in their wisdom, ordained I should acquire exactly the right table cloth to make my dining room happy – along with sundry other requirements that have been eluding me, such as the Right Drinking Glasses and another tarnished silver Thing For Flowers.

But even more, They bestowed on me a cabinet of incomparable kitsch, decorated with plastic mother of pearl ladies and servants mingling in golden green hills painted on a perfectly black background. I have waited out lesser temptations for almost a year, too broke and disheartened to risk buying the wrong thing for my new home. I was hoping for The One – and my faith was rewarded with a Treasure. Oh, it is every bit as wonderful as you are imagining.