This past week we’ve enjoyed a couple of serious rains. I still think we need more to make sure the aquifers are full. It’s so nice when the sun comes out after rain and everything is freshened.

I have a large sugar maple tree at the edge of the driveway. It’s about fifty feet tall. I planted it in 1977 when it was a foot-tall sapling. I got it from the Felix Neck tree sale. It lost a good amount of leaves during last Friday’s rain. The driveway and neighboring flower beds are covered with the golden leaves. It’s really pretty. I can’t bear to rake them so they should make for a cozy winter covering.

Sandwiched between the Hebrew Center and the Tisbury School is a large pink house with two perfectly-matched pink pee gee hydrangeas. When the children were small, it was called Phantom Heights and was surrounded by lots of evergreens, giving it a spooky feel at Halloween. The children’s father would hide in the bushes and scare them during trick or treating. They would beg him to do it again.

None of my apple trees produced fruit this season. I think it was simply too dry and hot. Last year I was able to can about 20 quarts of applesauce from them.

Pineapple sage is one of my favorite annuals. It has bright yellow pineapple-scented leaves and blooms bright red after Labor Day.

Several plants come into their own this time of year. The Montauk daisy is blooming happily. It can tolerate several frosts and comes back yearly. It’s nice with sedum and ornamental grasses. Check out the entrance to down-Island Cronig’s.

I have several garden beds in the vegetable area that are covered with mulch hay. I sprinkled some winter rye directly on the hay. Hopefully it will sprout and then in the spring I can simply flip the hay over. It’s an experiment since last year’s rye sowed on bare ground got away from me in the spring. It took forever to shovel it over.

I yanked up my king of the north lima beans and separated out enough pods to fill a large paper bag. They are spending a few days in the fridge as time has run its course in my still-busy life. Hopefully by week’s end I’ll boil the pods so the beans will pop right out. I hated lima beans as a child. We were served succotash for school lunch at the Earl J. Hyatt Elementary School in Rew, Pa. This was a mix of corn and limas. We were not allowed to leave the cafeteria until we ate everything. Most of us picked those beans out and hid them in our empty milk cartons.

At any rate, I love them now.

I made the mistake of engaging a pollster recently. He questioned me about the ballot measures in Massachusetts elections. He tried in vain to convince me to vote “no” about taxing millionaires more. He inquired about small businesses. I said if they make more than a million, they’re not small.

Then he tried to win a “no” by bringing up farmers. I, of course, wondered how farmers like me could make that much and commented that I would like pre-K for my great-grandchildren and I would like the potholes on State Road fixed. He then asked if I voted Democratic. My affirmative response caused him to hang up. I laughed out loud!