We are back in the land of the wet. Saturday’s storm blew away the sun with enough force to topple trees, knock down climbing beans, and floor rows of corn. It also whipped the electric lines from here to kingdom come. The power company says our power will be restored by Tuesday night.

I got some of the sunflowers upright again, and while I cleared out the fallen beans, filling a basket with green beans and a wheelbarrow full of leaves and vines for the compost, a wild bee quickly found the upright sunflowers as if there had been no storm at all. Where did that bee pass the storm? Warm and snug in its burrow? Or did the storm blow it in from the San Juan islands or even Vancouver Island?

It’s a busy day in paradise. There is so much going on. Where to begin? Here is a condensed version of this morning’s news:

• A handful of blackberries were picked for breakfast
• A dog dug furiously when he smelled a mole in the ground
• Redwood branches welcome fresh dew on their leaves
• A new chick hatched during the night
• Corn blossoms fell like rice grains on a squash leaf
• The sweet smell of corn blooms perfumes the morning air
• Corn ears are fattening
• The morning sunbeams are playing hide-and-go-seek behind pumpkin leaves
• Onion bulbs are swelling in the sweet earth
• Cabbage heads are tightening in the garden
• Overnight, a growing cabbage head has invented fifteen new shades of green
• Poppy buds are bursting with joy at waking up with a million beads of sparkling, diamond-like dew drops
• A wasp is waking up after spending a night sleeping in a sunflower flowerhead
• A happy dog soaks up love

Don’t let the news media tell you otherwise, paradise is all around you, you can see it, you can feel it, you can smell it, you can find it, it’s everywhere.

No two snowflakes are the same. We’ve heard that a million times. Neither are any two blackberries. Each one is like no other blackberry. All you need to do is look at them closely. Hold them side by side and there they are, two unique blackberries. No matter how many blackberries you pick, you can never pick the same one twice.

It’s the same with eggs. You can never have the same egg twice. Or the same lovage seed, and a single lovage plant produces thousands and thousands of seeds. It must be a lot of work making sure no two are ever the same.

Or the same melon flower. Each flower blooms only once. All the things we see, all the clouds that flow overhead, all the birds that sing for us, we never see the same thing twice. Nothing is like anything else.

Which is more beautiful? Is it this flower? That flower? This plant? That plant? Maybe that one over there. It’s a good thing there’s no test. They can be all the most beautiful. You don’t have to settle for one.

When you garden, be prepared for beauty to strike at any moment. Being struck by bolts of beauty is a hazard of vegetable gardening. Maybe humans aren’t designed to handle so much beauty. It might be why they flee the countryside and flock to the cities, to get away from being overwhelmed by nature’s beauty. Nature is unrelenting when it comes to stimulating the senses with beauty. It might be safer for the psyche to live in a high-rise, far from nature, with only other high-rises to look at out your window.

This morning I went into one of the hoop houses to tend melon plants, and was awed by the melon leaves. During the night, the melons had shed excess water through the fringes of their leaves. The leaves were fringed with wet diamonds. You don’t see such beauty at Tifanys or Cartier. You can’t buy this beauty. It’s in the garden waiting for you, for free. You just have to have the fortitude to handle such unexpected beauty at any time when you grow vegetables. Perhaps I should wear dark shades when I garden so I don’t succumb to overstimulation. How much rapture can an individual tolerate? There must be a limit. If these posts suddenly cease, you’ll know I have succumbed and am lying lifeless between vegetable beds, a victim of nature’s beauty.