Saturday. (creative title, eh?)

The birthday party Loch went to last night went well, even though it finally did rain!  We dropped him off and came back a couple of hours later to pick him up and they were all playing outside after the rain and covered in mosquito bites, but they didn't seem to notice.

Finn was a bit upset that Loch was at a party, so I took him out for frozen yogurt.  I was amazed at this kid, there was a wall of dispensers filled with candy toppings and what did he choose?  Plain vanilla yogurt with strawberries, blackberries & granola!  I, too prefer the simple stuff for ice cream, but for a 6 year old to choose it was interesting.  It wasn't even the kind of fruit packed in syrup, it was the plain stuff!  

After that he was really nice to endure a short trip to JoAnn's for buttons and then to the bookstore to use my 40% off coupon for a nice canning book.  I already have the standard Ball Book (short version) and "Preserving Summer's Bounty" and they have been pretty helpful covering all the basics, but I wanted a really comprehensive one if I'm going to have the ability to can meat as well as the standard garden produce.  I did get side tracked by the ones with all the pretty photos, but found them lacking in lots of library type information as I figured and ended up with this one which is put out by the Rodale people which is a very trustworthy source of info for the gardening/preservation folk out there.

Speaking of the garden, this is today's harvest.  Once again had to take yellow pears off a dying plant, they are slowly turning and I'm hoping to get some before it's toast.  This is the remnants of a bolting lettuce, just took the good parts and had to compost it.  Rare around here to see lettuce & tomato in the same photo.

Not enough for a big salad, but enough to make tacos for dinner - nobody complains on taco night around here :)

All I did today in the garden was harvest and walk around after dinner, it was just too hot.  The mosquitoes are now out in full force.  Was greeted by this lovely find:

As Finn says "baby pickles are growing"!

The Brandywines are the only variety out there showing no signs of stress, disease, insects or other general mayhem.  They are getting quite large.

Turn the corner to check on the squash bed and get smacked in the face with...

#$&%!

My squash hasn't even bloomed yet and they are already here.  Found a few that were just hatching too, we smashed what we could.  Lots are turning metallic already, indicating they are very close to hatching.  I hope they hold out until morning when I can wage war in a proper fashion.

 Leaving on a happy note... look who's back!