My wife is seduced. It happens every summer.

Morning, noon and night, she is obsessed. She talks about her perennial passion. She rushes out of the house to embrace it. I cannot get her to talk about much of anything else.

Yet every winter, the seduction fades. And I accept her back again.

Why would I accept her back after she has been seduced?

Three reasons come to mind:

¯ Our cellar is chockablock with yum-yums: Applesauce, grape concoctions, peaches, pears, beans, tomatoes, all sealed in jars.

¯ She is quite cute.

¯ I am a noble fellow.

As you have surmised by now, Dear Reader, the seducer in this instance is: Crops.

My wife has a few early summer flirtations. She picks lettuce, when it is not drowned out. She garnishes everything I eat with broccoli florets. Arugula, rosemary, garlic scapes, herbs and green leaves I cannot even name appear on my plate at mealtime.

But my wife becomes positively wanton when the blueberries erupt.

We have dozens of berry-bearing bushes (the precise number is a state secret). As a little girl, my wife gloried in traipsing to her father’s blueberry bushes, some now transplanted to our fields. She would skip there with her little bucket, singing and yodeling as she frolicked while picking the berries and stuffing her little mouth.

Well, maybe not yodeling. But you get the picture.

These days, she leaps out of bed, grabs a container and flings herself at the bushes, sometimes even before breakfast. In previous years, we have waged war against the birds that also covet the blueberries.

This year, to our delight, our barn cats seem to have taken to the sport of bird munching. Their success is limited in terms of actual birds dispatched, but having two to six cats leaping and bounding from ambush amid the berries has markedly decreased the predation, even from the bushes that, because of their numbers, we leave uncovered by protective netting.

So we have a lot of blueberries. I sigh a lot.

As I move within the house, or stride manfully about the yard engaged in my noble tasks of chicken feeding, etc., I glance at her straw-hatted form bobbing among the bushes.

Soon, of course, this will end. Blueberries are done by about the end of July.

But her love affair will continue.

Oh! The zucchini! Yellow squash. Bush beans. Late peas. Still more broccoli, plus kale and more of those to-me unnamable green leaves in smoothies, on dinner plates.

My wife is lost to me. Picking and sorting, cooking and canning, then flitting to the computer for even more ideas about what fun to have in the kitchen, she barely even speaks to me.

My own workload also increases due to her obsession. I can cook, but unremarkably so. She is a culinary gastronomist, a gourmet.

So in general, she cooks and I do dishes. These days, “dishes” include pots and pans, colanders and bowls.

Alone, I toil, missing the companionship of my beloved.

The worst is yet to come.

Tomatoes!

When the 50 or so plants display their awesome fecundity, there is no stopping my wife. The kettles boil. The jars march in platoons of six through their sterilizing water baths. The pressure cookers hiss and warble. The jar-top sealers plunk their xylophone-like melodies atop the cooling jars.

One year, she canned more than 100 quarts of applesauce. Another year, more than 100 quarts of tomato sauce, in different iterations. Some was combined with peppers. Other sauces featured other seasonings. Most was plain, its doctoring deferred until it actually would be used in wintertime.

Oh, the seduction! Ah, the pain!

I am left to loudly bemoan my wife’s near-total neglect of conjugal bliss.

Almost.

Everything has an upside.

She is too busy to add much to the constant “Honey, do …” list that occupies me at other seasons. So I suppress a giggle when I spend an hour in the garage or barn, tinkering with this or that little chore that, if I were under “Honey, do” pressure, would need to be done in 15 minutes.

And those luscious, juicy tomatoes, spread upon whole wheat bread with mayonnaise, make … ‘Mater sammiches! I love ‘Mater sammiches!

Occasionally, I wander over the hilltop to our lower field, there to sharpen my shooting skills with target practice, look for deer, or simply to roam aimlessly — and leave the chores for another day.

Yes, my wife has been seduced away from my side. She is also too busy to notice the things she tells me to do that remain undone.

I grieve that my wife has been seduced by Crops. I also giggle on occasion, as silently as possible.

Eventually, this too shall pass, and we shall reunite in wedded bliss, with a full larder spilling out of cellar, mudroom and other shelves. But now, I am so (giggle, chuckle) sad that my wife has been seduced.

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Denny Bonavita is a former editor at newspapers in DuBois and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: denny2319@windstream.net.