It’s Sunday morning, and I’m home from Venice Beach where I had a great time visiting Rand and Bradley. If you’re not a regular reader, that’s my brother Rand and his partner Bradley who are the design/tech support team for Kalyn’s Kitchen. While I was in California, they redesigned my blog into three columns, and added some great headings in the sidebars. What a talented team those two are! I appreciate their help and support so much.


Besides updating the blog, I also got my very first laptop computer while I was in California. I feel like I’ve finally entered the technology age! Bradley helped me set up the router so I just had to plug it in at home, and now I can sit out on the porch (or more likely, in front of the TV) and read my favorite food blogs! We also visited some great L.A. restaurants and Rand created a very interesting version of Caprese salad, which I’ll be reporting on later.

If you’re coming here looking for Weekend Herb Blogging, it’s being hosted by Virginie of Absolutely Green this week from Nantes, France. She won’t be posting the recap until Monday, so you still have time to send her your entry. Send it to absolutegreen AT free DOT fr by midafternoon on Sunday, U.S. time. Be sure to link to Absolutely Green with the words Weekend Herb Blogging somewhere in the post.

Going away in the summer is always a mixed bag for me. Of course, I love traveling, but I also miss my garden and wonder what’s happening there. The previous week I’d been working on getting rid of the grassy weeds in one of my flower beds, (one of the summer projects I promsed to tackle), and the vegetable garden got neglected a little. When I went out to inspect it this morning I found some good news and a little bad news, but overall, the veggies seem to be doing well.

Last week I showed you my first lilies starting to bloom. This has now turned into an entire row of beautiful lilies across the front of my house, with a few daisies, red hot pokers, and yarrow plants peeking through in the background.

The first Brandywine tomato is very good news. This heirloom tomato is one of my favorite tomatoes for flavor, and they start to produce a lot later than the other tomatoes. This year I gave up on putting these in cages (they always tip over) and I’m just letting them sprawl on the ground.
I also found the very first tiny spagetti squash. I love to eat these when they’re still fairly small and green. I’ve been doing this for more years than I want to admit, and everyone else in my family does it too. Last year when my blog was still very new I posted about how to cook spagetti squash when it’s still green, and if you have this in your garden I recommend trying it this way.

My curry plant is starting to get some flowers. I haven’t grown this before so I’ll be interested to see what the flowers look like.

You can’t really tell from the photo, but this cucumber is nearly a foot long. Too big for great flavor, but luckily I have 5 other cucumbers big enough to pick. Looks like I’ll be making some cucumber salads this week.

I think the arugula is also big enough to start eating some. A few of the leaves are being eaten, but overall this looks pretty healthy. I’m going to try cutting it off and see if the plant will produce new leaves. Anyone know if this will work?

Now for the bad news. Something is seriously eating the leaves of the zucchini plant. Some leaves look fine, and others are completely devoured like the leaf skeleton you see here. The leaves of my green beans are also being devoured. I don’t think it’s snails this time. Any gardeners have suggestions for what to do? I prefer not using poison to kill bugs, but I won’t put up with this for long.

Even worse news, the same pest is also eating the basil. My young little basil plants are about half eaten, and the bigger ones look like this. Grrrr. This is not acceptable. If I don’t get suggestions in the comments I guess I’ll be visitng the garden center tomorrow for advice.

That’s it for the garden update today, but here are links to my other garden updates if you want to see how things are progressing.

first garden update
Garden Update #2
Garden Update #3
Garden Update #4
Garden Update #5

If you’re not really into gardening, no worries, there are other weekend happenings. Visit Eatstuff for Weekend Cat Blogging, Sweetnicks for Weekend Dog Blogging, or My Life as a Reluctant Housewife for Weekend Baby Blogging. There’s also a new every-other weekend event coming that I just learned about. Send your posts by July 10th for Weekend Breakfast Blogging at Saffron Trail.

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