Cool, drizzly weather rolled through on Friday and Saturday. For a few days, summer turned to fall. Spiderwebs caught raindrops. The air was sweet with the smell of moist earth.

The kabocha vine wants to grow over the entire garden. Perhaps it’s time to pick one.

The two baby ducks are almost as large as their mothers. It takes no time for a duck to grow up. Another week and they will be all feathered out and nearly indistinguishable from the grownups.

The first red tomato ushers in peak summer. It’s been so long since I’ve had a warm, red tomato off the vine that I’ve forgotten how good they taste.

The bees are back in abundance. After the heat wave in July, the bees vanished for a week to ten days. But they swarm the blooming mint and other flowers again.

And this interesting shape is a developing hazelnut. Hazelnut’s swaddle their developing nuts in layers of protective leaves.

And it’s not peak summer with wonderful potatoes fresh out of the garden. They are so much better than store bought potatoes, I wonder how I endure the off season when I can’t eat potatoes fresh out of the warm earth.

We are back to summer cool, chilly, refreshing mornings and sunny, warm afternoons. What we are powerless to stop are the forest fires raging on the other side of the mountains. Each day the ocean breezes keep the smoke on the other side of the Cascades is a blessing.

Into this soft, cool summer, two ducklings appeared in the garden. I’m still not sure which of the two garden ducks hatched them. Without a drake in the garden, I placed, what I thought were three fertile eggs underneath the gray hen, and just one underneath the black one. But the two ducklings which popped out, are sticking with the black duck.

Nature is mysterious. And the ducks aren’t talking to me to tell me what happened.

There are new chicks too. Caroline decided to go broody just a few days ago. For weeks, Maureen was sitting on eggs. But at the last minute, Caroline decided to brood with Maureen, just in time for the chicks to hatch. And now the two are co-parenting a brood of chicks.

Every season I see hens come up with new ways of raising broods. It’s no wonder species diverge and new ones arise. There are frameworks creatures tend to follow, but there are always those trying out new things.

First potatoes, the first potatoes of many. The nice thing about growing your own potatoes is that you can pull them out of the soil without pulling the whole potato plant out of the ground. All it takes is digging gently with a few fingers until you find a decent size potato. Pull it out and let the potato plant keep producing more potatoes through the season. These two made for a wonderful summer lunch.

Nothing compares to potatoes fresh out of the ground. Their skins are so delicate you have to handle them carefully or your fingers will rub the skins off.

Fragrant lilies are opening too. These lilies were a gift from friends so it is a pleasant surprise to see them open for the first time.

It is cool again. The heat has passed. Cool air from the Pacific has pushed the heat to the east. We were lucky. The hottest it got here was 90ºF (32ºC) on Monday, the first time it was gotten that hot in the 16 years we have lived here.

Initially the forecast was for much hotter temperatures, but we are close enough to the bay that afternoon sea breezes tempered our heat. Short distances to the east, temperatures soared.

But what will it be like ten years from now, twenty? Will we look back to 2021 and long for summers when it only got to 90º?

Snow and the other hens are sitting on eggs. The last time I looked, Snow had five eggs. Five ducklings I can handle. However, Duchess, is sitting on 12 eggs. Grey Queen must also be on a nest, but where? And how many eggs?