I know, I know, dog days and all that… but I love the sheer laziness of August accompanied by peaches and watermelon and cantaloup and tomatoes and, and… I love the act of being present to what I eat and of carving out a bit of peace and quiet in a noisy, busy world.

And I admit that I speak as a non agricultural person. I’m not toiling in the noon-day sun for low wages. I am not a gardener (so not a gardener), so I am enjoying the fruits of someone else’s labor… if I really say grace for the food I eat, I must consider the well-being of everyone from local farmers to migrant farm-workers as I celebrate.

But there is also time, indeed there must be time for meditating on the deliciousness of a ripe peach whose juice drips down your face. There’s probably a poem in there… And there’s certainly a peach for me to eat! So I’ll go do that very thing. And I’ll think slow and Peaceful thoughts. You do the very same thing, too, ‘K? I’ve got a bowlful, if you want a peach, I’m happy to share.

And enjoy Nancy Cleaver’s incredibly beautiful mandala: Organic Peace, a water color she painted in 2009. She says this about the design: “This holds an ambiguous natural form for you to interpret. Is it a chrysanthemum, a shell, a seedpod, a cone? Whatever you see, it may perhaps be your totem for peace, calling you.”

Peace calls us and sometimes it just blesses us where we are. For me, August is one of those months.