The trees and fields have long since been bright springy green, and the cicadas and crickets are a constant hum each night as they sing their distinctive songs. Even a few maples and other hardwood trees are foreshadowing what’s to come with a few branches topped with reds and golds.

The daylight hours have diminished by more than an hour. Chickadees have returned to the feeder and complain loudly if I haven’t filled it recently. Wild daisies have been replaced by black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne’s lace and the sweet-smelling red and yellow hawk weed, which are now nearly overrun with goldenrod.

It is truly the fullness of summer. And perhaps even more important, the abundance of vegetables, herbs and greens pouring out of the garden has surpassed all my expectations.

Two garden seasons in a row as prolific as these is almost unbelievable.

I’ve kept a close watch on neighboring gardens, gauging the progress of each of my vegetables with theirs. When I’m out gathering lettuce (the fifth crop so far), green tomatoes to fry and red, succulent, absolutely delicious ones to eat out-of-hand or in a salad, I almost become lost in the greenery produced by winter and summer squashes, pumpkins, gourds, corn, and seven-foot-high sunflowers.

It’s a jungle and I love it!

It’s this time of year when all the backbreaking work, the construction of several new raised beds, the continued building up of pumpkin and gourd mounds, the money, weeding, watering, feeding, and planning I’ve devoted many months to, more than pays off.

Even if the garden turned out as poorly as those of the 2009 season, I’d still be thankful for whatever grew. Watching tiny seeds grow into great, bushy basil plants, silky ears of corn, humongous sunflowers, warty gourds, and more beans than I and all my friends and relatives can eat is a miracle in itself. Although I have grown a vegetable garden for decades, every year is unique and joyful. This year, our cups truly runneth over.

Meat has been almost banished from our supper table. Instead, we often make complete meals of vegetables — freshly dug, bright-red Norlands potatoes topped with fresh chopped parsley, beet greens with tiny beets on the ends, yellow and green beans, sauteed crookneck or patty pan summer squash, and salads to die for. Soon, corn on the cob and acorn and butternut squash will join the melange.

I’m at my most creative when building salads. I use whatever happens to be ready, like several kinds of lettuce, tiny spinach leaves, tiny, sweet carrots, freshly pulled and thinly sliced onions, cherry or traditional tomatoes, a few pansy blossoms, a sprig or two of chopped basil or curly or flat-leaf parsley, and whatever else I can find. My planning ensures that we’ll have fresh, tasty lettuce well into October.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, my pantry shelves are beginning to fill up with canned vegetables ready to eat during the late fall and winter months. So far, we have canned or frozen yellow and green beans, baby carrots (the REAL thing, not what passes for baby carrots in the supermarket), blackberries, rhubarb and strawberries.

The real heavy canning time arrives when most of the tomatoes have ripened. Then, I use some of my red cayenne peppers, tomatoes and homegrown garlic to create salsa for some real heat during the cold winter months. Then there will be quarts and quarts of tomato juice, plum tomatoes, tomato sauce, and anything else I can think of using tomatoes. Several varieties of pickles will line the shelves, as will many jelly and jam flavors, a few beets, both pickled and plain, and whatever other surplus there may be.

Hanging in a cold back hall to dry will be curly and flat-leaf parsley, basil, and rosemary. Dozens of lovely, large heads of garlic are already there and have been used in some late-summer dishes.

As the weeks and months advance from May to September, I keep notes on what to do differently next year. So far, I have decided that more raised beds and mounds for vine crops are needed. I must plant vegetables a little further apart, and I want to give parsnips their very own bed, along with pak choi. Although I know I should cut down on something, somehow I can’t make myself do it.

The whole gardening season, from planning on graph paper in January and ordering seeds in March, to the final garden clean-up in October, is just too wonderful.

And when I have preserved too much, which I usually do, my friends and family will receive boxes of locally grown produce as Christmas gifts.

My local produce, grown about 50 feet from the living room window, can’t get any more local than that.