Ain't she sweet, see her walkin' down the street

Self Installing Dog Application, Single Module with Optional Camera-flash Eye Enhancement, posing ever-so-solemnly on Compatible Installation Platform....

Laughing doglet, after Gryph snapped the first pic and told her how wonderful she is. *can't help but grin* How can you not laugh when you see this pup's infectious laugh? All's right with her world and she's delighted!

We had quite the day yesterday; my lil Ladybug got her nails and fur trimmed on a friend's front porch while it rained all around us. Lady behaved amazingly well! I had so MUCH trouble socializing her in Phoenix but here, even though it took her a while to accept people, she is doing amazingly well. It's a good thing, too, cuz she is WAY too cute and way too full of sweet personality for people to ignore her. She really is a cute-magnet!

Here is the garden a couple days ago, before the drizzly daylong rains started.

It really has grown a lot, despite the wilting!

Butternut blossoms. These are still all male flowers, and they evaporate out as much water as the leaves do, so I confess... I have been practicing blossomcide. I have pulled all the male blossoms (and dumped them on the roots as mulch!) in the hopes that the plants will concentrate on growth, because the female blossoms aren't even showing yet; they come at the ends of the vines and the vines aren't long enough yet. But maybe, after three days of loverly drizzle, some will grow. *crossin' my fingers!*

Aren't eggplant blossoms pretty? This is my third one; so far nothing has set. The pepper plant is covered with blossoms and buds but again, nothing has set... and I was so bummed with it that I didn't take its pic, so there.

*grin*
You never know what you might find, hidden back in the shelter of an overhang... aren;t they sweet? This is about three times lifesize though, lol....

Here's another hidden treasure. The butternut leaves almost completely conceal these now--which means I occasionally forget to water them and have to run back with a glass of water--but they seem to be doing much better in the shelter of those big leaves. The weed no longer intrigues me as it did, and when the supposedly dead one resurrected itself in the butternut pot (where I had tossed it for mulch), I threw it away. I may do the same with this one, and see if the basil grows any faster. I'm happy to say the mint is reviving; tis in the pot behind the weed.
I paid for this purslane....

.......and here it is, oh lovely-joy-joy, growing wild in the sidewalk.

FOR FREE.

Hrumph. *tries not to pout*

I cannot harvest this purslane though, because it is right next to a busy street and the leaves will have absorbed enormous amounts of car exhaust. Not a good thing to be eating....

My bought-n-paid-for purslane IS good eating, though; I harvested some and threw it into the pot when I last cooked a chicken, and the other night I harvested more--a really big handful of long stems--and chopped it into spinach for spinach pies. Just to be on the safe side (since this is a new food for us), I cooked it pretty thoroughly before I put it into the pies. Best to let our bodies get used to it gradually. The next batch won't need such thorough cooking and eventually we'll be able to eat it raw.

I love discovering new foods, and I REALLY loved adding a free handful of food to supplement the spinach--it meant I only needed one bag of spinach instead of two, and on a tight budget, that means another batch of spinach pies another day! My goal is to get us used to it so that I can do half spinach and half purslane together, and stre-e-e-etch that budget just a little farther... yanno... far enough to occasionally indulge in, oh say... malted milk balls.... or say, black raspberry ice cream.... *cheeky grin*

So far nothing is happening bloom-wise with the green beans and summer squashes, but I have hopes, oh I have hopes! It just amazes me how fast we go through vegetables. I know it's because I really cut back on meat. Tis healthier but surprising, lol....

Here's another surprise.

I saw the bulb foliage in the spring before the ivy filled in, and wondered what it was... but it died away before anything happened and I forgot about it. Now I know--Naked Ladies!!

See? No foliage at all! So of course I had to tease Gryph about our building's heretofore undiscovered "nudist colony" lol! Hey, tis fun living with a non-gardener. *wink*

I probably won't post about the garden again until August. *poker face*

Oh, what's that you say? Two days? Well, I'm sure we can all wait two days, lol!

Oh! Another rescue to tell you about, although I don't have a pic yet--a lil round drop-leaf dining table.... BUTCHER BLOCK, no less!!!!! And I found it by the trash with a sign on it that said "Free." What's wrong with it? One broken leg which can be ever-so-easily fixed! It probably needs refinished too, but yanno, mineral oil would do the trick.

Why am I so excited when I already have a round table? Two reasons. The one I have is particle board, and I've decided that as long as I don't have to pay for my furniture, I want solid wood--and those drop leaves will make it take up less space in this crowded room!

Oh! Three reasons! It has pedestal legs, and so the chairs with arms will fit under it!

So yanno, when the rain stops, my old table (which I rescued from the trash here, and documented in an early post) will go outside with a lil sign on it that says "Free." Maybe someone else can use it, eh? And if no one here wants it, they might across the street where we used to live.

Recycle Rescue Thrift Girl, yep, that's me! *grin*