I was all set to complain about the weather this week—extremely dry with my least favorite—ill winds! Then I watched a couple of segments on The Weather Channel. There is extreme flooding in Texas. Ten inches per hour of rain. Wow! The average rainfall in that part of Texas is five inches a year. I saw a clip of a person’s living room with the grand piano floating.

Then, even worse, there is an incredible heat wave in India. The real temperature is almost 120 degrees with 100 per cent humidity. They said the heat index is 143 degrees. How is that even possible? I’m totally miserable at 85 degrees. The poor people there have no relief. Some 800 are already dead. Don’t even get me started about climate change deniers.

My memory is failing me. I hope I have not made the same observations for several years running. I can only hope that you, dear reader, are equally forgetful or at least forgiving.

There is a perfect lilac bush next to the old Duarte homestead on the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road. Perhaps you remember them? She was a rosy-cheeked woman who looked like she belonged in a painting by a Dutch Master. And he used to walk his cow across the street every day to a skinny pasture between the telephone company and Wynyah Lane. He had a sign on the pasture gate which said NO STANDARD TIMES PHOTOS.

Apparently, someone from that newspaper had snapped a picture of the aforementioned cow and Mr. Duarte got irritated. I just love that story. I wish I knew the particulars.

Last spring I ordered some different varieties of Tall Bearded Iris with the intention to sell. I put them in the vegetable garden way too close together. There they remain. Please look up these varieties — Poem of Ecstasy, Raptor Red and World Premier. I have 20 each. Let your imagination wander. Absolutely spectacular. They are all over three feet tall with six or seven blooms on each stalk.

Good thing I can enjoy them as the bunnies have helped themselves to my peas. Honestly, there is no such thing as a perfect world. Good thing I was blessed with good humor and a fine sense of irony.

I lost an entire bed of cabbages to root maggot. I did not even bother to address the situation, just ripped them up and replanted with plum tomatoes.

I had carrot seeds germinate in a week’s time. I was pleasantly surprised since I usually wait much longer. Radishes, turnips and other ‘brassicas’ jump out of the ground in a couple of days.

I noticed the Tisbury School redid the wooden garden beds. I love how all the schools are now making an effort to teach the children about growing food. We would never have even imagined a school garden at the Earl J. Hyatt Elementary School in Rew, Pa. In fact, my parents did not garden until I had left home. They considered it common, and much too reminiscent of their Depression-era upbringing. It’s odd, since Dad was a hunter, enjoyed the outdoors and loved to bring home fish and game. Mom always canned foods other people grew and used apples and berries from the yard and mountainside.

The wild morning glory vine is completely taking over. Selling the property is becoming an option. I simply cannot keep up. It pulls up easily but always leaves a tiny white root. That root will make a new plant in a nanosecond. As it is weeded, it will invariably yank out a desired baby plant.

Los Angeles has now decided to lift its minimum wage to $15/hour, incrementally, by 2020. While any raise for hard-working people is a good thing, why does it take five years for employers to accept the facts of life? People cannot live on the present wages. Walmart actually counsels its workers about how to sign up for government assistance like food stamps, Medicaid and heating assistance. How is that fair to us taxpayers, subsidizing a multinational corporation with gazillions of yearly profits because they are too greedy to pay a decent wage?

We shop there thinking we get big savings. I’ve said it before. How much can we afford to save?