Odds and ends and beans

This past weekend we spent a lot of time watching CSI and trying to avoid being outside. Saturday morning we had breakfast at Cafe Eclectic (which besides having the most adorable waitress ever has the best mochas in town) and ran errands. I grilled steaks, summer squash and zucchini for dinner, since it's so hot outside I like just cooking everything on the grill so I don't have to warm up the house even more.

Sunday I got up at the crack of dawn in an attempt to beat the sun, so I could finish up planting perennials in the flower bed and spreading some mulch. I was outside for 2.5 hours and was completely soaked by the time I finished. But that stupid flower bed is finally done. When we moved in it was full of overgrown monkey grass (liropa) and that was it. We spent those early days digging out monkey grass and cursing whoever let it take over that bed. Two years later, it contains ferns, several kinds of salvia, a knockout rose, larkspur, daylily, lavender, anise hyssop, foxglove, miniature crepe myrtle, star jasmine, butterfly bush, lamb's ear, dwarf sunflowers, coneflower, cherry sage, mint, phlox and lantana. Everything should come back and hopefully get bigger and fill-in the gaps.My beans were big enough to eat last week, yay! I blanched them and we had them with grilled pork chops. They turn green when blanched, which was kind of cool looking. I picked another batch for dinner tonight. The seed packet says that they'll continue to produce all summer as long as they're picked clean.

Last week I had a gathering at our house and one of the things I made was a vegetable platter with vegetables from the Farmer's Market. The only thing that didn't come from there were the grape tomatoes. When I saw the purple cauliflower I knew I had to have it, when I blanched it the water turned purple and I stored that fact away for later use because it might come in handy if I ever chose to dye my own yarn with natural dyes.

I finally finished that shirt I've been trying to sew together for ages. Again, my friends helped me and in fact they probably weren't going to let me leave until I finished it. The hem looks a little wonky, but it is my first shirt so that's to be expected. It's this Simplicity Built by Wendy pattern. I cut out another top the same day but I needed fusible interfacing, so I didn't do anything with it yet. Maybe I'll work on it this weekend, the fabric is from Joanne's.