"Just in time" can feel pretty good; it means that something has occurred at the right moment to take full advantage of circumstances, usually beyond one's control, to establish something that must be done or that gives satisfaction. I found my "just-in-time" moment of satisfaction when, last night, the sky was pummelled with dark, threatening clouds and gave loose to a voluminous downfall of rain that hasn't stopped since.

To me, there's little as satisfying as of-the-moment pleasure in realizing that yes, you got your plants set up, and though you've taken care to water them to give them a head-start, nature herself has intervened on behalf of those plants to do the job properly. It must be a little like, on a vastly smaller scale, what farmers experience in relief when their crops are irrigated by natural means and they can breathe a little sigh of satisfaction and gratitude to nature.

Yesterday I set about almost completing the season's planting. There's more yet to be done, but the greater balance has been accomplished. The initial visual satisfaction of seeing colour, however immature, where just a few hours before there was none, in the understanding that the colour and the plants responsible for them will mature and bloom incessantly through the hot days of summer providing the final contentment.

It just so happened that yesterday was scorching hot, reaching 30 degrees with a mitigating wind. My husband completed filling the backyard garden pots with soil, and though I didn't mange to fill them with the begonias that I overwinter in bulb form in our basement, that will be left for another day. I completed setting the vine-fillers in the garden pots and urns at the front of the house, planted tomatoes and herbs, perennials like liatris, delphinium and chrysanthemum and several miniature ornamental roses.

And then, we set off for a very humid, hot ravine walk to complete the afternoon's activities. The sound of evening rain is comforting to a gardener who has completed most of the planting chores that were envisioned for a certain time in a certain place, in the certainty that nature will assist in the nursery-chore of supporting health and maximum production in the plants tenderly placed in the garden.

There was additional gratification in this day dawning overcast, with torrential rainfalls, the oppressive heat of yesterday succumbing to more 'reasonable' temperatures, the cheerfully bright heads of flowers appearing to pop up out of nowhere, delighting in their new atmosphere. Even our now-very-large magnolia has recognized its opportunity, beginning to open its lush, large pink blooms.