Sunday Evening

Today the plant lady delivered plant orders to the community garden, so after church the kids and I changed into our gardening clothes and hurried over to the garden. We arrived just as she was unloading trays of plants from the back of her SUV. She had for us 2 each of Amish Paste, San Marzano, and Polish Linguisa tomatoes. She had 3 Mr. Stripeys one 4-pack of muskmelons and one 4-pack of watermelons for us.

Watermelons and muskmelons take up a lot of space, so I'd been saving them an entire section of the garden, even knowing that the melons will probably end up wandering into the other sections before the end of the summer if we let them. We planted two of each in the community garden and then two more of the muskmelons back at home and one more of the watermelons back at home. That gives us two varieties of watermelons. Hopefully this year we'll get ripe watermelons out of that. Last year we never did. My remaining watermelon plant is going to Jill to put in her backyard. It will be her first attempt at growing something edible in her backyard here.

The remaining tomato plants are all doing very well now--thriving now that the heat is here to stay. My bean plants at the community garden are doing beautifully--which is a relief since bean beetles have turned the ones I have in the front yard into lace. I haven't given up on the front-yard beans but it's good to have the ones at the community garden as backup.

We brought one of the Mr. Stripey's home to the front-yard garden and the rest filled in the remaining spaces in the community garden. Now to find, oh, 20 or so tomato cages. I did get 8 today from freecycle, but I think they're all far too small and they are so covered in rust that I'm reluctant to press them into service until I can get some steel wool. I picked them up anyway because they might be useful for some of the smaller tomato plants. I don't have any way of knowing how big they'll all get since so many of the varieties are new to me. I figure anything that desperately needs support today will eventually outgrow a small cage. But there are quite a few that are still pretty small.

We also replaced the dead peppers with new hot peppers and one new bell pepper. The remaining peppers are gradually regaining all the growth they lost during the cold snaps and I couldn't bring myself to pull up but one of those. The rest are fighting back valiently and anyway, hot peppers don't cost much in August. So it's a gamble worth taking. (I really hope the sweet peppers do well though. They're nearly $4 a lb right now at the grocery store.)

Yesterday we celebrated Max's 11th birthday. He had some friends over to play, then we ate home-made pizza and store-bought ice cream cake and then I took them to the pool where it was "free swim" day. Everyone had a great time, including Milo who ate too much cake and threw up a bit in the pool. This should have created a lot of drama--but somehow didn't. It had all disappeared into the filter or something by the time the clean-up crew arrived and everyone carried on as if it hadn't happened. I made Milo sit out for ten minutes, but then let him go back swimming. He wasn't sick--just had too much ice cream and went swimming right away.

Max got to pick dinner today, so we had pork chops with green beans and mashed potatoes and gravy. Yum. We had an early dinner and then a very relaxing afternoon/evening. The phone--and therefore the internet--had cut out after a few rumbles of thunder (I swear they do it out of habit) and so I knit and Chris read his books and the kids played. Now everyone is in bed and Chris and I are just trying to stay up long enough to prove we still can and then will crash into bed ourselves.

Tomorrow it's back to work for all of us except the twins--Ben and Milo are on summer vacation until September now. Max has one last week of school. I have ordinary amounts of work to do (doesn't look like the legal position will come to fruition--apparently they've decided to keep the office the way it is for now--no new position) and want to finish this shawl by Wednesday evening so I can wear it to Max's school's end-of-year celebration Thursday evening. So maybe there will be some good knitting photos later in the week.

So my baby is eleven. I'm so proud of him :) He's just a good kid.