The First Tomato!

One of the biggest thrills going here at the Three Cats Ranch is the appearance of the first tomato. Can canning season be far behind? Since I used my last jar of pasta sauce on Monday evening, it can't come too soon.

While I was in the greenhouse, I noticed the lettuce is large enough now to start picking leaves off of it. Not that we need any lettuce. There were two beautiful heads of Bibb lettuce in our CSA share yesterday, along with a bag of bitter lettuce greens. The bitter greens are good with roasted beets and a sweet honey dressing.

Also in the CSA share, more carrots. I'll be canning some of those into some Spicy Dilled Carrot Spears later on this week. I saved the carrots from our last share so I'd have enough. They're a family favorite, with Matthew being the biggest consumer.

Also in the greenhouse, the poppies are ready for planting.

Mike fashioned a protective shield for them to keep the squirrels from digging them up. Yesterday I planted them in the open whiskey barrel.

When I checked on them later in the day, the squirrels had reached through the large gauge of that fencing and dug up a clump. Fortunately, they were still hanging together, and so I'm hoping no harm was done to them. Obviously the scale of the fencing is too large. Today, he'll cut another piece to lay in the other direction, and hopefully, that will keep their little digging paws out of the dirt. Poppies are blooming now, and so I worry these won't bloom and reseed themselves before it's too late. I have more seeds, but I'm really hoping these will take off and bloom before the season is over.

In other planting news, finally, finally, finally, the lilies are planted. The calla lily was a gift for Mother's Day this year. The star lily has been sitting neglected in a pot for at least three years. Now we have a little lily patch near the sundial. Those are the day lilies there behind. You can also see one of the zucchini plants in the extreme right of the image below. Zucchini blossoms are not unlike lily blossoms, right?

And despite the neglect it's received, the star lily has a bud on it, and I expect it'll bloom very soon. Cool.

Also getting ready to bloom...the lavender. Oh, I have plans for your flowers, my darlings.

Of course, we always use them to garnish our Bees Knees cocktails. Here's an image of one from last year. The recipe for this concoction can be found right here.

The first step in making a Bees Knees is to make an infusion from lavender blossoms, and that is used to make a lavender simple syrup. So, each year I dry some of the blossoms to use for making the infusion. This year, I want to try making some lavender blossom jelly. It's made much the same way as the chive blossom jelly I made a couple of weeks ago. And this must be my year for jelly, because I've also acquired the things I need to make some mint jelly from the overly enthusiastic mint growing in the garden. Erik likes lamb, and I think he would enjoy some mint jelly to accompany his lamb steaks.

With my monthly pedicure and CSA pick-up on the yesterday's agenda, I didn't get as much sewing done as I'd hoped. Nevertheless, I had a bit of time between the two outings to get a little more done on the flamingos. Now I've sewn together most of the second section. I've reached the section where the pink flamingo's eye is located.

There are a couple of tiny little pieces adjacent to the eye that I'm going to have to remake. The pieces are so small that they ended up completely entirely where the cloth tape that holds the freezer paper together is located, and that means there's no freezer paper exposed to stick to the fabric. It's not a problem to remake those two pieces, but I can't continue on until I do.

Today I have grocery shopping to do, but I'm determined to spend the afternoon sewing today. I've cleared the calendar of everything else. My goal is to work on these through the end of the week, and then move on to something else.

Since I suppose you're Jonesing for kitty pictures, I caught these two resting in the afternoon. Honestly, Sadie is so active, it's hard to get an image of her that isn't blurry.

Smitty is the lazier of the two, and he can often be found meditating on the critter he killed most recently.

Kind of gives you whisker envy, doesn't it?

So there you go...we're pretty much back to what passes for normal here at the Three Cats Ranch. If I'm going to get any sewing done this afternoon, I'd better get myself off to the grocery store, and fast.