Gardeners, those ever-hopeful, optimistic individuals have, nevertheless, their dark side. I’ve noticed a certain competitiveness, especially between neighbors – “going to have peas for the Fourth?’ they’ll ask, smugly eyeing their own bulging pods. Or spying your slow-to-ripen tomatoes they offer you a basket of their lush red ones – “we’ve put up all we need” they say airily.

Gardeners love to critique, even if in a gentle, somewhat passive aggressive way.

“That’s certainly a good crop of weeds you’re growing,” my so-called friend observed the other day. Well, yes I am, damn it, the best ones ever.

Lambs quarters, those soft, gray green plants that crop up every where, easily pulled (and even eaten if you want) have grown into giants in my potato patch this summer with inch-thick stems.

And a tenacious grass, not witch grass that spreads by runners deep down in the bed, but something else, an innocuous little tuft in the spring that grows into a monster, tall and spreading itself wherever something else isn’t growing. I wonder if it’s what my dad called crab grass. He devoted a good part of every summer on hands and knees pulling it out of our lawn.

The worst, though is the galinsaga. Do you know it? Wally and I battled it every summer, but no matter how many we pulled by August the garden was a sea of tiny white flowers atop lanky green stems. We could never get rid of it. Until frost, that is, when the whole summer’s crop would be flattened in a single night.

We called it chick weed; it’s only recently I’ve learned its real name and something of its habits. According to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden website, where it’s the Weed of the Month, galinsaga has the ability to produce multiple generations until first frost. It’s tempting to add to your compost pile (which we’ve done for years) but here’s where one of its most successful survival strategies kicks in. Those miniscule daisy-like white flowers produce mature seeds almost immediately, unlike most annuals that don’t set seed until the flower withers. As soon as it’s flowered “it’s already on its way to producing the next round of baby galinsagas.”

The potato patch my friend was inspecting the other day was in full August flower – Galinsaga flowers that is. There was no sign whatsoever of the potato plants that dominated a few weeks ago. Luckily I knew approximately where the rows were and could begin to pull the shallow-rooted stuff away to uncover the withered potato stems.

In spite of the riotous weeds overhead the potatoes had been quietly doing their thing under the soil. Digging potatoes, (once you can find where they are) is fun; pulling out bales of weeds isn’t, a good job to finish before the heat returns this week.

In my dreams I have an immaculate vegetable garden with straight rows growing within raised beds, separated by neatly-trimmed grass paths. Soaker hoses are permanently installed in each bed, connected to a central distribution hub. I can water each bed in turn by flicking the little lever that controls each hose.

The reality is very different. This year’s broccoli and cauliflower failed, the onions were small, I didn’t plant enough peas, the green beans got away from us and are turning tough; even the zucchini is disappointing. The melons have a fungus.

Ah, but the asparagus, garlic, the potatoes and dry beans, the carrots and tomatoes, the spinach, leeks, and lettuce, pretty savoy cabbages, parsley, sage, and basil, the beets and chard, the delicata squash, raspberries and cucumbers, even the corn still to come will feed us all winter.

This is approximately my fiftieth garden. You’d think I’d have learned something.

But gardening is a lot like raising kids. Each one is different. The growing conditions change each year, sometimes with rain and fog all summer followed by years of near drought. The year the micro-burst came through town in August and flattened Don Heald’s entire corn crop, mine was just grazed; I was able to stand up the stalks and got corn. The potato beetles came back in force this year, as if finally realizing that their mortal enemy, my husband, was no longer around. He kept them in check the old-fashioned way, with thumb and forefinger.

Where are the Japanese beetles this year? Not in my grapes or beans. We’d had a couple of bad years and expected them to be a major pest, but so far so good. The green cabbage worms are gnawing away at the dried up broccoli, but the cabbages are too healthy and repel them, or so some gardeners believe.

And the gardener changes too. Just as the mother who is completely absorbed in her first baby morphs into a more casual style of parenting with number 2, 3, or 4, the gardener approaches each spring with more and more assurance, no longer consulting gardening books or looking for advice.

After fifty years planting and tending a garden is second nature. And as Nature will, surprises always lie around the corner – micro-bursts, droughts, fog, blight, tomato hornworms. I guess that’s why we gardeners keep planting year after year, pitting hope against experience, testing our own cleverness against the successful survivial strategy of say, an inconsequential-looking, daisy-like weed.

Town

Two changes are being proposed for the town charter which will be discussed at a public hearing Monday, August 27 at 6 p.m. at the Town Office. One change will raise the amount which the town administrator must put out to bid for town work from $2000 to $8000; the other change has to do with the Budget Committee’s first meeting of the year, from “the month of August” to “first meeting following the Annual Town Meeting.”

School

Hard to believe that school starts a week from tomorrow, Tuesday September 4.

Library

Tuesday is Knitting & Needlework Time with the fun & friendly fiber-philes. All are welcom to join the group - bring a project and come to the library Tuesday from 4 - 6 p.m.

Wednesday is something new to the library - Watercolor Journaling - from 4 until 6 p.m. This group began with a workshop presented by Lucinda Hathaway and has continued to gather regularly at a different venue. Newcomers are invited (adults or age-appropriate children with adult supervision). There is no charge to attend. Participants should bring their own supplies: watercolor paints and brushes, pencil, black fine line permanent pen, small container for water, paper towels or towel scrap, and journal. There is no formal instruction, but there will be some show and tell and encouragement followed by quiet time to work. After this meeting, the group will gather every first and third Wednesday at the library 4-6 p.m.

Bayshore Baptist Church

Bayshore’s congregation welcomes their new permanent pastor, Draa Mackey and his wife, Joanna. Draa, a graduate of Pensacola Bible College, is in the process of moving to town and has taken over his grandfather Ted Cunningham’s home maintenance and lawn care business as well. His wife, also a graduate of Pensacola, studied to be a youth minister. Sounds like a great team for Bayshore.

Pastor Mackey will be installed on September 30 at 4 p.m. with former pastors of the church, Robert Bell, Russell Bailey and Bill Stone in attendance and David Kinney to welcome the Mackeys to town. The community is welcome to come help the congregation install their new pastor and enjoy a light supper afterwards.

Meanwhile, a concert by the Kindred Hearts, a well-known Southern gospel group will be open to the public at 6 p.m. on Sunday, September 16.

Oldtimers Luncheon

The annual Oldtimers Luncheon is planned for Tuesday, September 11, 11:30 a.m. at the Lobster Pound. If you didn’t receive an invitation but live in Lincolnville, you’re welcome to come. Just let Janet Plausse know – 789-5811 – so she can add you to the list.

Petunia Pump Revitalized

If you’ve come through the Center in the past few days you know that “something’s going on” with Petunia Pump. That something is a beautiful new wood shingled roof. Petunia Pump, the one landmark that means Lincolnville Center, has fallen on rough times, or at least its roof has. And oddly enough nobody owns it – not the town according to Dave Kinney. But a crew of volunteers has taken on the task: Tom Dickens, Mike Richardson, and Michael Timchak have all pitched in, Tom on the ladder doing the shingling, Michael crafting a new finial, and Mike providing tools, ladders and much support. A donation from Modern Woodmen paid for the shingles and other supplies.  And by the way, the changing decorations and plantings are thanks to Bob Hollingsworth and his sister Jeanne.