After weeks and weeks of no rain, the weather pattern has finally changed and we're getting a wonderful thunderstorm.  Since I can't go out and play, I'll blog and make a chicken, spinach and orzo soup for tonight.  It's a toss up between the chicken soup or a nice bowl of pasta. I have a fresh bag of spinach and a bunch of Swiss chard from the farmers market that need to be eaten.  My garden chard has been slow to mature without the rain but after this rainy week we have ahead, the vegetables shouldn't be thirsty anymore.  The beets and carrots need to plump up.

The flower beds were planted from packets of mixed seeds strewn onto the ground, patted down, and watered.  After that I never bothered with them.  I also don't know what some of the flowers are.

After researching flower images, I found out these are larkspurs. These tall beautiful larkspurs grew from that mix of  broadcast seeds. 

When we first moved here and Cliff joined station 17 volunteer fire dept., one of the old-time farmers gave me a few garlic bulbs to start in my newly plowed garden.  I stuck them in a separate spot outside of the garden but they didn't do anything the first year and  I didn't know anything about growing or harvesting garlic.  They never produced good garlic heads. So I just left them alone.  From then on each year the garlic grow on their own unattended, ignored and I let them produce scapes that flower into soft lilac colored puffy balls that attract beneficial insects and butterflies.  Nature is amazing.

A few weeks ago Cliff got a hankering for Bavarian cuisine and I needed fudge.  We drove to Helen, GA to eat at the Old Bavarian Inn.

and shop at the best candy shop.

If you buy two large pieces of fudge the third is free. I love fudge.   My kind of fudge deal!  This won't happen again for a lo-o-ng time because sugar feeds inflammation and  I don't need any help causing trouble.  I find it on my own.  About ten days ago I did something, don't know what, that caused my left Archilles tendon to inflame.  It was so painful that even the sheets touching my toes kept me awake.  My doctor told me to soak my foot and ankle in Epsom and rest. Two days later I was fine and back to gardening, modified Zumba, and yoga.   I keep two bags of Epsom in the house all the time.  One for me and one for the garden.  Cliff said he'd go searching for a 55-gallon drum for me to soak my foot in.  No sympathy.