Looking at the food coming out of the garden, I wonder how we ever came up with the idea that food can be industrialized. I wonder about it when I cut open a cabbage I just picked. It is so different than any cabbage I find in the stores, even the local co-op. Store potatoes don’t have the deep flavor that the potatoes I dig out of the ground have.

Perhaps it’s that to have a cabbage that can endure going through the food industry, from growing in a field with thousands if not millions of other cabbages, to being picked quickly, industrial processes demand efficiency so industrial cabbages need to be picked as speedily as possible, packed, shipped through warehouses, trucked to stores, and stacked on shelves; such cabbages need to be tough and endurable.

Cabbage varieties that don’t go through the food industry can be sweet and delicate. Eating cabbage picked moments ago is sweet, crisp, and full of love. Real food can’t be industrialized, just like a parent’s love can’t be canned and sold on the shelf.

A blue whale is 30 meters, 98 feet, long. The green whale in the southwest corner of our property is longer than that, 31 meters, 103 feet, from where it was cut to the tip of the longest branch. Add the height of the stump, the upper branches which broke off when the tree fell, and the roots below ground, and the green whale resting in the corner of our property is a giant compared to the magnificent blue whales, a giant no Greenpeace film crew will ever want to document.

At one time, these branches were a hundred feet in the sky, where they waved in the wind and rested the feet of many a weary bird.

The green whale is now the home to a myriad of green plants, this fern included. They are to fallen trees what barnacles are to blue whales. Only beached trees don’t rub their skin on gravelly ocean floors to remove their green barnacles.

What do plants think when we plant them in straight rows? In the wild, plants never end up that way, all lined up, in rows that march on to the horizon. When they pop up and see all their siblings lined up in front and back of them, do they wonder how the heck that happened? Does it drive them nuts?

While planting French breakfast radishes, I came across this curved twig, which turned out to be the perfect radish planting tool. The curved tip made it easy to poke holes for the radish seeds. This one is a keeper.

The previous radishes which used to call that bed home are on their way to the compost bin. Radishes grow to be rather large plants with flower stalks that reach three feet and higher. One plant will put out hundreds of pointy seed pods and thousands of seeds. With so many seeds, it’s a wonder the world isn’t one big radish field.

Cattails in bloom are a sign of late summer. The female flowers form the dark brown, spongy tails. The male flowers are on the spike above. In the spring when the tails turn to fluff, birds use the fluff to line their nests. Next year, this cattail may provide a soft bed for baby birds. Will a migrating bird fly through here this fall and decide to come back to this spot to make her nest on account of the cattails?

Forming cabbage heads are another sign of late summer. These are filderkraut, the pointy cabbage of Germany. These cabbage are so good when eaten fresh out of the garden. A few more weeks and they will be ready for picking. There are just a few market days left at Bow Little Market this season. Do I take some to sell in September, or keep them all for myself?

Sunflower’s chicks are enjoying this late summer day. Born two and three days ago, they are full of curiosity and have already learned that when their mother scratches the dirt, good things to eat appear. While taking these pictures, I saw her knock bugs out of the flowers for her chicks to pick off the ground. Mother hens are constantly thinking about their chicks.