The ground is bone dry but dew wets my shoes most mornings.

Wish all you want for rain.

Raspberries ripen on dew but many crops are burning up in this heat. On the bright side, Farmer gets his haying done quickly between work and the dew.

Dew is beautiful and I wonder how long it will sustain corn, which is also a grass of sorts. Some tomatoes show signs blossom end rot, telling me they need more attention.

Presently I lack the answers to drought, cabbage worms or world peace. The white butterflies are here and the cabbage family, having outgrown their fabric tent, is now holy as church.

Bugs know just what to do and diatomaceous earth or not potato bugs keep me hopping, picking and squishing.

I’ve got the cabbage worm mystery nailed down to timing. The only years I’ve had fine, we’re talking fine cabbages and cauliflower, two things happened: it either rained all summer or I got a jump start on early plants in the cold frame and they were ready before the white butterflies came.

Bugs have much better instinct for their egg laying than I have for seed planting. It isn’t yet second nature for me to know exactly when to start bedding plants so this year again I’ve learned the hard way that perhaps the cabbage family ought to be planted first.

This year is also thus far the worst I’ve seen for carrots. I got them into the ground after the spring rain and poor germination resulted. We haven’t had but one real rain since and this sandy garden isn’t easy to cover with hoses. Even when mulched, it’s just too big.

Instinct is out there, somewhere under layers of commercial conditioning smothering the last three or four human generations of human consciousness. This is evidenced by a tornado that recently thrashed two Saskatchewan farms within a kilometre of each other.

The first resident watched it coming alone from his picture window alone. His windows shattered and he walked through a missing wall as it passed while his basement filled with debris. The second grabbed her grandkids and went to the basement. She was safe too.

Where does instinct come from? Like every other species, I’ll have to get busy learning from the results of my efforts like birds reassembling their nests. Discouragement isn’t an option and they never give up either.