The Wall Street Journal has a garden section. Well, sort of. The plants and gardens discussed are all sort of New York based—Northeast anyway. I read about that, though it’s totally unrelated to anything I go outside to do. Last week, in the ‘Mansions’ section, they featured outdoor kitchens, baths, and living rooms; one of the outdoor kitchens cost $100,000. And one of the owners said, “I’m so into the outdoors.”

We have an outdoor shower. What a luxury. Seriously, how many people in the world, some of my friends in fact, don’t have a shower at all. Much less clean, cold water to pour out of it.

I’m into the outdoors, too. But I have my $12 shower to wash the outdoors off of me a few times a day. It’s my luxury that when I’m covered in worm’s poop, baby grasshoppers (which stick to me when I work shirtless), Bermuda clippings, and dust, I get to wash it off before break.

In the Morning

In my outdoors, early, early this Monday after summer solstice, here’s what I saw:

– Melon colored four o’clocks that will wither in a few minutes, with the sun.

– One out of season Crinum ‘Pink Trumpet’ standing 5 feet tall.

– A basket of eggs, tomatoes, squash and cucumbers, that my Mother gathered at dusk last night, while I was inside, cooling off with ‘The Farmer’s Daughter’ by Jim Harrison.

– A group of plants soaking in seaweed fertilizer, all tough, drought tolerant things, satisfying pre-arranged to go into a parking lot planting tomorrow.

– A gray cat with a mole.

– A tall, leaning, man-that-needs-to-be-cut, but-I-want-the-seeds-old-flowerscape of Angelica pachycarpum

– A few little starburst of Hypericum, (Saint John’s Wort) just coming in the scub by the paper box.

– And the parts of our new garden project where Tom, who hates cold water, is bringing more of the inside outside.

We’re going for the lux—our shower behind the crinum shipping shed is getting one of those portable hot water heaters. It cost $120 on Amazon. That’s a $120 lots of people in the world would be thrilled to have for important things, things of life.

Our gardens keep us going, they keep us fed and gardens that cost a lot make jobs for carpenters, and me. No judgements. There’s always someone more rich, more poor, more in need of things that we don’t need.