We’ve been experiencing a pleasant break in summer’s hot weather with several nice rains last week cooling the air and watering our vegetables.

Our plants are flourishing and we’ve been picking several ripe tomatoes and adding them to our meals.

I harvested enough green peppers to make a panful of stuffed peppers one evening, and we picked a few more last week to take to our daughter-in-law. We’ve enjoyed crisp cucumbers and fresh yellow squash from the farmers’ market. The lush summer crops are definitely one of the prime joys of the season.

The last half of July has been full of activities. We had a visit from cousins at Broken Arrow who were on their way to a weekend at the lake. The next day, members of our quilt class drove to Grove, Okla., to eat Mexican food and attend a quilt show there.

I’ve had recent phone visits with both my sisters, received a nice card from my aunt and uncle in Kansas City and, last Thursday, enjoyed lunch with friends at the senior center. Both a doctor and a dentist appointment helped fill my calendar the last two weeks.

July was National Ice Cream Month, and Jim has been doing his part to celebrate by eating his share of the cool, creamy treat.

A chapter titled “The Ice Cream Parlor” in my Just Desserts cookbook, one volume in the Southern Heritage Cookbook Library, outlines a bit of ice cream history. The hand-operated freezer came along in the mid-1800s with one container, filled with base mixture, inside another filled with ice and salt.

Mary Randolph, author of The Virginia Housewife, 1824, observed that the cans should be tall and narrow, the outer tub only a few inches larger in order not to waste the ice. And she insisted that the inner can should be turned constantly. There was no crank or paddle at that time.

Ice cream was first made commercially in 1851 in Baltimore. New developments came quickly after the initial commercial venture. We got Baked Alaska in 1867 to celebrate the purchase of Alaska from Russia. The ice cream soda came along in the 1870s, and the sundae around the turn of the century. Abe Doumar invented the ice cream cone at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904.

A chilled half cantaloupe filled with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream makes a lovely dessert.

Lillian Russell, the famous singer-actress of the Gay Nineties, is supposedly the first person to enjoy this treat. She was having dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria with fl ashy financier Diamond Jim Brady. Unable to decide between the melon and the ice cream, she ordered both and a gallant maitre d’ combined the two. Thus a new dessert was invented.

One of my Susan Says columns in the News Herald back in the early ’90s told of an enjoyable ice cream social after a Sunday night church service in late June. We indulged in a variety of homemade ice cream, from Grape-Nut burnt sugar to chocolate with cherries and nuts to plain ‘ole vanilla. There were all sorts of cookies and cakes, brownies and berry pie to accompany the icy treat, and I reported that everything I sampled was delicious. Those ladies at the Methodist Church included some excellent cooks.

National Ice Cream Month has passed, but don’t lose heart. August is National Peach Month, and what better way to serve vanilla ice cream than with a freshly sliced peach on top! Or, better yet, combine your love of the two foods and make some homemade peach ice cream. August is also National Catfish Month. I’m envisioning a meal of crispy catfish fillets followed by a big bowl of peach ice cream. The month offers all sorts of tasty possibilities!

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Susan Holland, who works for the Westside Eagle Observer, is a lifelong Benton County resident.

Opinion, Pages 6 on 07/31/2013