In fact, ever since I bought this house and moved in twenty‑five years ago, what I have loved most is spending leisurely summer days just like this in the backyard. Among the vegetables in the bibimbap I’m eating now is the Samyook chrysanthemum greens I planted years ago in the small garden patch behind the house. Someone once gave me a few roots, calling them sinsunch’o (angelica keiskei), so I planted them—and within a year they had taken over the entire garden. When I harvested them fresh and ate them raw as salad, the flavor and aroma were so strong that they upset my stomach. I thought perhaps they were poisonous plants and pulled them all out by the roots. But they were astonishingly persistent; they sprouted again here and there, and now they have practically claimed the whole garden.

These days, I harvest them regularly, wash them well, blanch them lightly, and freeze them. Then once a week, I use them to make bibimbap. Eaten raw, the taste is too strong and rather unpleasant, but once blanched and prepared as greens, they are delicious and nutritious. So I rely on this bibimbap for one meal a day. And when the maitake mushrooms appear in the fall, I blanch and freeze those as well, and add them to the bibimbap. There is no better tonic in the world.

Today again, I savor and give thanks for God’s grace in providing daily bread in every season.