This morning I'm blogging from the kitchen porch.  Crows caw in the distance and woodpeckers hammer the trees in our front garden.  Hummingbirds visit their feeders as early as 6 AM.  I was greeted by one as I turned the hose on to water the front flower garden, refresh the ground water dish and the birdbath. What a great time of year!  The cool weather vegetables that were planted late March/early April are being picked and eaten daily.  We've consumed so much lettuce, we now hop out to the porch instead of walking.  Friday I picked the last of the red leaf, the mixed  lettuce and both kinds of spinach.  Spinach was starting to bolt.  We've given away eight bags of lettuce to friends and still have five more in the refrig.  Today I'll make a couple spinach quiches to freeze and maybe blanch and freeze the remaining spinach.  A few more broccoli are ready to be cut and Swiss chard is looking good.  Carrots are weak and wimpy and beets seem slow to mature.  Went to the Farmers' Market in town Saturday morning and bought two beautiful bunches of Candy Mountain Farm beets.  The farmer told me how he sautes the greens so I'll try them.  I never ate the greens when I was a kid.  My mother ate all the green that grew in the garden and the yard.  I remember her digging up the dandelion greens, washing and cooking them........... then eating them.  As a kid, I thought, how gross!  Eating weeds!

 garlic blossom with a hoodie

Read Michael's blog yesterday and I was so pleased to see he is gardening again.  He had his tiller overhauled and turned over the soil for his vegetable garden.  In New Hampshire, they can begin planting after Memorial Day.  We ran the A/C last night after temps reached 88 yesterday but have all the doors and windows open now.  It's 60 degrees but will probably hit 90 these next couple of days.  We spent last evening with friends up on Boulder Creek Rd.  Mary is Italian so she told us to come with an appetite and had prepared enough food to feed a hungry country.  We were able to sit all night out on their back porch without being bothered by mosquitoes or gnats.  They only flying creature we saw was a bat that kept maneuvering in and out of the porch as darkness set in.