Lavender blue, Pattypan yellow, Zuchini green

This has been a hard working week. I finished my new short story, put it aside for three days and revised it. I haven’t sent it out yet. Called “What Do You Want in the End?” Also wrote two poems this week.The garden is flourishing even though we’ve been in a drought until yesterday afternoon, when we got some rain. The gardens get watered but the trees, the bushes, the rose garden are all off the drip system and languish when there’s no rain. We finally got a good soaking rain yesterday. It rained two inches plus here and today the air feels clean and fresh and everything green has perked up. I want to get at the roses finally today and maybe make zucchini relish. I have to find my annual recipe and see if we have everything we need for it. We surely have enough zucchini.We are inundated with zucchini and patty pans. The cucumbers have slowed down but there’s still enough coming. The broccoli is still producing. I’m done processing strawberries, but I made a strawberry mousse for company last night. I have to check the black and red currants when it dries out, probably on Sunday or later today. It’s time to make zucchini relish and black currant goodies – jam, liqueur, vinegar. I’ve frozen enough broccoli now for the winter. I started freezing the pattypans – I puree them and freeze that. This week I started our fall cole crops inside: bok choi, various cabbages, radicchio and two kinds of Chinese cabbage. Also cilantro. They’ve all sprouted now and are in the bay window. This morning we’re moving them to the sunporch as they started getting leggy. The little greenhouse is unusable this time of the summer, except as an extra storage shed. I’ve seen it go as high as 132 F in there.I made cucumber soup for Ralph and Gigi as well as chicken, brown rice and a cold Spanish broccoli salad, followed by strawberry mousse. Tonight we go over to Paul & Dan’s. My old Volvo that I have driven for years died in the driveway about two months ago and we haven’t been able to get it going. Next week, somebody is going to pick it up as a charitable donation. They know it’s dead. It will be good for parts, unless someone can fix it. So for the rest of the summer, I’m without a car. We’ll buy something, probably a small used car, in the fall for me.Schwartzie is going through adolescence. He no longer sleeps with Woody. He goes to bed with him, snuggles, asks to be petted and then goes off to Xena. Lately they have been the power couple. He likes Willow as much as he ever has – but he knows she doesn’t wield any power. He wants to sleep near Xena, not touching but as close as he can get without contact. He observes everything she does.Cats have such volatile relationships. On the whole, though, all four get along in their own ways. For instance, Xena treats Mingus as her kitten even though he’s three years older than she is. He’s a small cat; she’s a very large cat. She likes to wash him. Sometimes he puts up with it; sometimes he even seems to like it; other times, it annoys him and he goes up to the top of the bookcases in my room to hide from her. I’ve created a path around the top of my office, all the way along one wall. The cats enjoy it. I want to extend it a bit further when I find the time.I harvested lavender Thursday. We set up the dehydrator of the summer yesterday. Lavender dries quickly so yesterday I was able to put the dried flowers into a sachet – I saved some old nylons years ago and cut up part of a leg for make a sachet. They protect sweaters from moths. We always have moths