It's a lovely, cool Saturday morning . . .

I've had two cups of coffee in my beautiful sheepy mug that Missy gave me for my birthday (thanks, Mis--I love it!),


and am sitting here enjoying the fact that I'm able to have the windows open on July 2. It's been threatening rain all morning, and even though the sun keeps trying to come out, it's still nice and cool compared to the 90-plus-degree temps we had this week.

Check out the beginnings of an eggplant from a bloom:


It fascinates me to realize that yesterday morning when I went to work there was a bloom, and last night when I came home it had transformed into a vegetable! How in the world does this happen? I would love to see some time-lapse photography to figure out just how this works. It looks like this one plant could product at least 6 eggplant--yum!

I lost one grape tomato plant this week, but the remaining one is hanging in there and beginning to bloom. I may get some tomatoes from it yet. My little strawberry basket has lots of blooms, and my peppers--well, they're still standing, but not much is happening with them. I need to baby them this weekend and see if that will help.

Missy and I went to the Farmers Market downtown yesterday during lunch and bought all kinds of veggies for the weekend. I also bought a few flowers to fill in some empty spots in my planters. I could spend an entire day down there wandering through all the booths. Of course, then we followed that up with a trip to the liquor store for wine, so, you know, it all evened out . . . .

This weekend I plan on cooking short ribs in the crockpot, making some ratatouille and guacamole, and I thought I'd try roasting some garlic and making a garlic spread with some fresh chives from my herb garden. I'm on a real veggie kick lately because it's been to hot to eat anything else and it surely won't hurt me to eat a little more healthy, so YUM!

One last photo from the garden:


Isn't she cute? She's my garden angel--I've named her Essie, after my grandmother.

Oh, and as for knitting progress--NONE, nada, zip. Why? Because I HATE knitting a "regular" heel--HATE, HATE, HATE, HATE, HATE! I always knit too tight, and I know I'll break at least one needle, and I HATE IT when I do that. So today, once I'm settled into the couch for the afternoon, my plan is find another heel pattern to use. Otherwise, these socks are never going to be finished.

And I'm going to work on my shawl--I swear.

Link: Saturday Morning Garden Blogging, Vol. XIX