As I write this on Tuesday evening, I am ever hopeful that we actually get the rain predicted. My friends Norman and Allison Axelrod reported last week from central New Jersey that flooding with more than three inches of rain happened in their neighborhood. We here on the Vineyard received enough to run the windshield wipers a couple of times. Between the pollen and dusty ground, we cannot stop sneezing on the job sites where we are doing nothing but watering.

I’m never satisfied with the irrigation systems. Soaker hoses work great for established plants but the babies are languishing in the heat of midday sun.

The locust flowers have come and nearly gone in a matter of days. I did manage to pick an arrangement for the house by standing in the truck. The smell is otherworldly.

I spent an enjoyable late afternoon at Flat Point Farm. Lydia showed me her ambitious and productive garden. Later, Arnie helped me load the truck with bales of mulch hay. Good thing, as I’m not as young and strong as I used to be.

Hopefully I can use the aforementioned hay to correct a winter rye mistake in my vegetable garden. With my daughter’s help we planted the rye in early November on the beds, then rough-turned it over in early spring when it was a few inches tall.

Then, as life tends to do, time got away from me. The rye was easily three feet tall when Violet had her first weed whacking experience. The rough clumps of soil are no longer workable, given the busy-ness of early June.

Hopefully covering the entire mess with hay and seeding some winter squashes might produce something.

The good garden news....I ate a few peas. I had started them in plug trays in mid-April and set them out sometime in the middle of May. I use all three varieties: sugar snaps, shells and snows.

The snow peas were the first to produce. I use mammoth melting sugar seeds. They get quite tall, up to five feet.

We are also eating tons of beets. I have good luck starting them early in seed trays and separating them painstakingly. It really pays off. I never have to thin them, which I am loathe to do. I hate their little lives to be in vain.

My pet peeve this week is the re-introduction of speed bumps in the Vineyard Haven post office parking lot. I never knew speeding was a problem there. Also, while down at the Five Corners, the question is why wait until after Memorial Day to do major road work? Just saying!

We got our first television in 1952 when I was six years old. The very first thing we saw was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The big celebration this past week was enjoyed around the world. Imagine! Seventy years on the throne.

Back to the 1950s, briefly. Dwight David Eisenhower was president in 1954 when the Warren Court unanimously passed the civil rights ruling Brown vs. Board of Education. No longer was state sanctioned segregation legal under the Fourteenth Amendment.

The test case in Little Rock, Arkansas involved nine black students attempting to attend Central High School. Governor Orval Faubus called in the state National Guard to prevent them from entering the school.

Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne Division to escort the students to class.

The President had previously been the commander in charge of the storming of the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

I was thinking about him and other presidents — both Republican and Democratic — who loved their country and were moral civil servants.

How did we come to an age when a failed, twice-impeached, twice-divorced, often bankrupt, egomaniac has a stranglehold on an entire political party and a third of the population? I continue to be one of the baffled.