Today I confronted, as I do at some point every year, the fact that this season will not be perfect. I can typically maintain the aspiration to perfection at least until May, sometimes into June. This season I’ve held on to this illusion far longer than usual. It’s the crew that’s made the difference this year—they are working so well and so hard that I talked myself into believing that maybe this time we can pull off the perfect season.

This morning’s field walk disabused me of this fantasy. Despite our best efforts, in some places the weeds are still getting out ahead of us. We’re at least a week behind driving tomato stakes, which means we’re that far behind again getting them strung. A good deal of the fall transplanting still lies ahead of us, not necessarily urgent yet, but about to become so. And the garlic will be ready to harvest in about a week, a big job that will require much time and more care.

All of which is to say, typical for July. There’s just not enough time for everything. So I will have to make choices, sometimes hard choices, about where we apply our energy and attention. Some things will get done. Others will fall by the wayside. And the perfect season will remain tantalizingly out of reach.

The good news: A perfect season is not the same as an abundant season. I don’t need the fields to look textbook pristine. I need them to produce fruitfully. And I’ve learned that fruitfulness and imperfection (and even chaos, to a certain degree) can coexist quite nicely, thank you very much. So we’ll work hard and make the wisest choices we can, and rejoice in the imperfect fruitfulness we hope to receive on down the line.