The veggie garden is doing pretty well. Lettuce is finally ready for pickin (had some last night) and the pea pods are growing gangbusters. They're flowering now, so the pods won't be far behind. Have to remember to pick regularly so they don't stay on the vine too long and become inedible.

As in years past, I'll be keeping track of how much produce I harvest all summer long so I can calculate cost savings. Expenses were really minimal, just the cost of seedlings and seeds.

Yesterday, I also sowed a second long row of beans: wax, green and edamame. And that pretty much completes the garden, which now contains:

Pea pods
Lettuce
Wax beans
Green stringbeans
Edamame (soybeans)
Heirloom tomatoes, both cherry and regular-sized
Yellow squash & zucchini, 1 plant each, that's all I have room for.
1 eggplant, in a pot
Several pots of basil, for my homemade pesto.

I also have several broccoli, cauliflower and collards, but all are already so bug-ridden I don't know if I'll get anything out of them.

When I planted the broccoli, I covered them with a fabric, forget what you call it, but it's a fine mesh you might see on a bridal veil. The plants under neath the mesh seemed to fare no better than thos I'd left out, so that was a big disappointment.

When I was planting the 2nd row of beans, I decided that was a good time to dig a trench and bury the rest of my soaker hose. Before doing so, i decided to test it with the water on to see if i did possilby puncture another portion of the buried hose several weeks ago when i was pressing down a tomato hope metal prong.

Voila! The soaker hose still works! I am so thankful, becus burying it was a big pain. Probably not deep enough, in places just an inch below the surface, so i hope it does stay cool enough under a hot sun to still be usable any time during the day. Although I'm wondering how useful it is to plants not immediately next to it; Since I didn't want to disturb plants or seeds nearby, the hose is probably as much as 6-8 inches away from the plants i want to water. The way it drips, i don't know if that moisture will really spread much. Hmmmm.

Happy to see that after some sightings of both english sparrows and house wrens at the bird box, bluebirds have again appeared and seem to be nest-building in there for the 2nd time. Two bluebird nestings in a single season would be a first for me.

Yesterday early evening, I sat out on the front stoop for a while drinking a bottle of Beck's and surveying my wild kingdom. It was so cool to see flashes of blue flying by, left and right. I don't know if these could be the fledged babies or the parents, but it doesn't really matter. Just nice to have them around.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day, warm but not humid. I had to put in about 6.5 hours of work for the publishing job, but after that, I vaccuumed upstairs and down, did the aforementioned garden work and some other stuff.

I was able to confirm with Teva Neuroscience that my new health plan is a member of Teva's patient discount program and in fact they use the same pharmacy, Express Scripts, that I used before, so I don't need to do anything there. I will still be able to get my MS meds with no co-pay.

The assistant at my neurologist's also called to let me know she'd gotten my letter with the info on my new plan and the form the health insurer wants you to fill out for prescriptions, so she has sent that in so i can be assured there won't be a lapse in the prescriptions. If I'm lucky, they'll let me refill 3 months at a time instead of just 1 month like last insurer, which is a pain in the neck.

Today will be my big shopping/running around day, i think. Still have gift cards to use at Home Goods, Sears, Home Depot and Lowes and WalMart, and I have some plans for those. Want to see if walmart has any large terra cotta pots on the cheap. I dont like to plant edible things in plastic pots or pots of unknown substance made in China, but terra cotta seems safe, esp. if made in US. the whole toxic drywall/sheetrock thing made me leery of Chinese products generally.

Also might like to get some white capris or maybe even some sandals or comfy sneakers. The kind i'm into these days are the slip-on variety with no laces. I always remove my boots when i'm outside in the yard before coming in the house, so i'm constantly slipping my footwear on and off.

While I'm out, I'd like to use the McDonald's coupon good for a free berry cooler or whatever they call it. I tried to use it once before, but they said them machine wasn't working. Hmph.

My combined AT&T phone and internet bill last month was just $35, the result of my downgrading my phone service to the $7.50 a month base program where you pay .41 a minute for long distance calls and .03 a minute for local calls. It's ideal if you already have a cell phone and just like the landline as backup. If i can get in the habit of just not using the landline, even for local calls, i should get that bill down even more.

when i'm at wal mart today, i want to pick up a hands free device. Not sure how it works exactly as i'm not real cell phone savvy, but am hoping i could easily use it when interviewing someone on the phone and i need to type notes at the computer. I hope the sound quality is good enough that i can do that.