It’s summertime and the living is easy. The weather is tropical, and the sweat is flowing like lemonade into a glassful of frosty ice cubes.

The corn is actively pollinating as of this writing, untold millions of plants making whoopie right out in the open where anyone can see them. This is the short-lived time of year when my entire world smells like fresh sweet corn. Not a bad thing if you ask me.

Much has been made lately about the heat and humidity and how these things are amplified by so-called “corn sweat.” This is not to be confused with David Corenswet, the guy who plays The Man of Steel in the latest Superman movie. I don’t know how David might smell, but I generally prefer the aroma of corn sweat to the human type.

Conditions for our garden have been challenging this year. The growing season started out alarmingly warm, which I took as a sign to begin planting. I was congratulating myself for getting things planted ahead of schedule when the weather abruptly became too cold and too dry. Then we received 7 inches of rain over a four-day period, and it was suddenly too wet and too hot. And right now, it’s too good to last.

Those were by no means the only horticultural hardships. I purchased a handful of pepper and tomato plants from a local greenhouse. A few days after transplanting the tender little sprouts, I went to the garden only to discover, to my horror, that they had been chewed off nearly down to their roots. I have no proof but suspect that the damage was done by a gluttonous gopher.

In a sweat, I rushed back to the greenhouse and bought emergency tomatoes and peppers. I left the original plants in place, thinking that they stood zero chance of surviving. Plus, leaving them there cost zero.

But that’s not all. My pumpkins and gourds were slow to germinate, and many didn’t emerge at all. I dug into the affected hills and found that the seeds had been chewed by some malicious malefactor. I have no proof but suspect that it was a voracious vole.

It wasn’t too late, so I replanted the plundered pumpkins. (Successful gardeners plant early and often.) Again, the seeds failed to germinate; again, an investigation unearthed chewed seeds.

The malevolent forces at work achieved the opposite of what I feared. The munched-upon tomatoes and peppers came roaring back from the brink of oblivion and have long since outpaced their replacements.

And the vole did me a solid by thinning out the pumpkin patch. The surviving pumpkins have become an explosion of greenery, with leaves the size of elephant’s ears. Leaves that totally shade the ground, stifling the wicked weeds. The pumpkin vines are annexing more and more real estate every day. They appear to have their sights set on Europe.

As with the fields of corn, there isn’t much to do right now other than let sunshine and chlorophyll do their thing. That and enjoy the sight of all this verdant vegetation, bearing in mind that everything will look much different in six months.

Somewhere in the dusty archives of our family’s photos is a snapshot of my great-grandfather John Eggebraaten. He’s standing amidst the lush profusion of his summertime garden, a straw fedora perched on his head, a wide smile pulling up the corners of his fierce, bushy mustache.

Based on what I’ve gathered from Ancestry.com, John was somewhere in his 60s when that photo was taken, and the date was sometime in the 1920s. That was an era when a person didn’t dare throw away a single calorie. John’s garden wasn’t merely a hobby; it was an integral part of his family’s survival.

I, on the other hand, keep a garden mostly for fun. Were I to put even a minimal value on the number of man hours expended to grow a pound of produce, it would quickly become clear that the veggies could be purchased much more cheaply at the supermarket. Never mind all the sweat that was shed.

But having a garden isn’t only about raw economics. It’s about a form of raw freshness that can’t be duplicated and won’t be found at the supermarket. There’s something ineffably wondrous about biting into a warm, sun-ripened tomato that was just plucked from the vine. Something that makes all the work and weeding and vying with villainous varmints worth it.

Were you to take a photo of me standing in my garden, I’d probably be wearing a goofy grin like John’s. Although my mustache isn’t nearly as bushy or fierce.

— Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.