Dear Captain and Mrs. Wing,

You have way better things to do on the road than be reading this, but if you ever wondered “What is happening to our garden? Will it be there when we get home?” the answer is “Copacetically, sort of.”

Fish Mint is a real natural, merrily creeping all over and staying healthy.

Your little pots of herbs are fine too. Here is a delicate little onion cousin. Garlic leek?

But the important crop is your two beds of Sunchokes. (Readers a little younger might know them as Jerusalem Artichokes. Readers my age didn’t call them anything, because in the 50s they hadn’t been invented yet. We had just peas and carrots in little frozen cubes.)

Your chokes are tall and full of leafy growth on top, as seen here in Exhibit A:

However, I have not seen them put out any of their signature yellow flowers. What’s more, the ones in the raised bed look okay, but the row planted directly in the ground outside your kitchen? I hope you are not too disappointed. They are looking stalky, and the middle leaves are losing color. Their lower leaves dried up, so I crunched them into flutters and scattered them on the ground as mulch.

Why’s that? Probably because of our heat wave dome. That set in right after you folks left, followed by a weekend of wildfire smoke. Four of us neighbors took turns watering every day, but the ground would dry right up again. That soil outside the kitchen is baked down pretty hard. I dug it up some and scratched a kind of moat around the plants, and Angelina drove me to the nursery for some topsoil to spread around, so that holds the water a little better. Yesterday cloudy weather set in with actual soft rain, so that should help. You might look at these pictures and think “Gah! Why can’t you lot have the sense to just add some [potash / potassium / nitrogen / lead shavings / brown sugar].” Or whatever they need.

Scarlet Runner beans in pots: Same deal. During the heat wave their lower leaves fell off, and the lower pods didn’t mature at all. Some really large pods are still there near the top, but as you can see they are looking a little peaky.

I brought some large pods in the house for fear the sun would burn them up. Those large pods were mostly empty. Two beans started to sprout, so now they are in a dish of water. The other beans are drying here indoors out of the sun, and I turn them every day. Most are too small to grow or eat. There are only a few mature beans, but they are certainly pretty.

Fuchsia: looking good.

Tomatoes: are those plum, Roma, San Marzano, or what? By any name, they’re growing in clumps.

The gladiolas are gone now, but they were the hit of the year, and people on the street still stop me to give me all the misplaced credit for how lovely they were. There are still some giant dahlias in different colors, and those are a hit too:

In conclusion, here is hoping that you are not unhappy with us. After all your hard work in the spring and early summer, you trusted me to take care of things. Maybe you will come home and feel that the crop will not be your dreams come true. If that is true, I am really sorry. We sure slugged around a lot of water. The texts and calls were flying as folks sent bulletins back and forth on what-all they managed to water when, so it really brought people together and gave them something to talk about.

Maybe your important crop this year was neighbors, and how we look at your plants and think of you. We miss you. Have a lovely time, and hurry home.