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A local wag once told me that at this time of year residents of small towns should lock their cars against attempts by desperate gardeners to rid their own households and diets of their excess zucchini and cucumbers by stashing them in the cars of strangers.

Our own garden has produced abundantly this year, thanks to the compost, manure and peat that we've used to amend the soil, and to the fact that our small vegetable garden lies this year within an area that had been shaded lawn until two years ago when we had a venerable but diseased elm removed. This garden sits now in the part of the yard that gets the most direct sunlight throughout the day, and it has done so well there that we will keep it as a mixed garden of vegetables and annuals in future years.

Thursday night before heading downtown for the parade that kicks off the Riley County Fair & Kaw Valley Rodeo, we ate a light meal of pasta salad with side dishes from our garden -- tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, squash, and (for the first time this season) cantaloupe. The lettuce, spinach and cilantro have bolted in the heat, but by mid-August I'll plant more for fall harvest.

It's July and nearly a hundred degrees outside, but I still shiver at the mention of fall. I have a love-hate relationship with the season. Fall and the new school term bring hope in a new notebook, uncluttered and open to unshaped potential, untested by execution, yet bold and lovely in imagination, the domain of human potential; but fall lies down all too easily before winter's onslaught, and the pages of the notebook become foxed and the edges fray. At this point, remember that the foxed page still holds ink. [Okay, I'm better now.]

On my internal calendar, the week of the county fair represents the middle of summer, the start of the inevitable slide back into winter, a season I could skip each year. Even the crickets' song seems to have become more plaintive in anticipation of fall.

This year, the week of the county fair also marks the twenty-second consecutive year since moving here that I have forgotten or been unable to attend the annual Flush Picnic, which was this Wednesday. Flush is a farm community in the county east of Riley. There is no town, no main street, no dusty storefront, no school and no grain elevator, just the St. Joseph's Catholic Church and its cemetery; however, the annual picnic that the farm families in the area put on as a fund-raiser for the church still attracts a huge crowd from not only the county but also the region, and many families from the area plan their family reunions to coincide with the picnic. It attracts me too but I've never attended.

I'm perfectly unclear about why it's important to me to attend this picnic. I have no friends or acquintances in the community. But for some reason, to make attending this picnic an annual tradition remains on my life list, just as learning to play the sax and the violin or writing that deathless novel do. So far, the picnic tradition exists only in reverse. This does not augur well for my Grammy or Pulitzer.

Anyway, after supper, accompanied by Taylor's neighborhood buddy Thomas, we loaded into the van, pointed it to the parade, and parked our butts on a grassy verge to wait and watch. This parade is a simple affair. There are no marching bands -- they're hard to assemble here in mid-summer, I suppose -- but the parade attracts plenty of local politicos, a few local merchants and radio stations, a half-dozen Shriners and vets, a few women on horseback (but no pooperscoopers -- also hard to assemble, I guess), many sparkling farm implements, every new-car dealer from the area, anyone else with an antique car that they want to show off, and plenty of 4H kids tossing hard candy to other little kids assembled at curbside. We always go.

As the parade ended, storm clouds moved over us, a few drops from a sunshower fell, and in the distance thunder rumbled like garrulous Fate.

Reading: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I cannot overstate the soporific influence on me of this particular Potter.