Dinner preparations: above, freshly washed marigolds, mint, basil, and parsley; and below, garlic scapes, pea shells, and shelled peas.

We are entering my favorite cooking time of year, when I can wander into the garden in the late afternoon and come back with a handful of any kind of herb, with bowls filled with lettuce, and now with peas.  I dislike the fat starchy ones; my goal is pure sweetness, so I pick my peas very young. That means my haul is always labor-intensive without much bulk to show for it. Still, there's much to be said for sitting on a back stoop in the gloaming, the wind trickling at the edges of my summer skirt, and shelling peas for dinner. The action of shelling is itself a harvest pleasure . . . the steady of rhythm of my fingers, the bowl filling with its tiny green beads, and, as I watch quietly, a mockingbird alighting on the rose arbor and pouring out its comic medley.

For a salad, I sautéed small portobello mushrooms in olive oil, tossed them with balsamic vinegar, and then poured the peas into the warm mixture so that they slightly cooked as the mushrooms cooled. Then I heaped the mixture onto lettuce and topped it with scissored mint and marigold petals. It was so delicious, and beautiful also, with the contrast of the dark mushrooms and the gemlike peas and the golden marigolds . . . a complete pleasure.

The rain has passed, so today I'll hang towels on the line, do some weeding, mow grass, maybe replace a sickly pepper plant. I've started rereading Woolf's final novel, Between the Acts, which for some reason I haven't gone back to for years. I worked on a revision yesterday, and maybe I'll tinker a little more today.  Next weekend the conference begins, and I'll be dropping everything else for five days of poetry and Zoom. I need to love the peas while I can.