Did you know that eggplant and tomatoes are relatives of the deadly nightshade? Potatoes, chili peppers and bell peppers as well. Not to mention tobacco. It's an interesting array of human-useful plants.

There are weeds which are perfectly fine fare, at least to my taste. Dandelion comes to mind. The early leaves, young, are quite nice raw or cooked (the older leaves are tough and bitter). My New England ancestors ate dandelion greens early in the spring as a spring tonic after a winter of fried salt pork and potatoes or ham and beans.

Batty doesn't like the smell of tomatoes. I was reminded of that as I was pruning the one cherry tomato this morning--it's showing a distressing tendency to "occupy" the entire garden, sprawling left, right, and center. After cutting it back and dumping the leaves and stems in the garden recycle bin, my hands had that really rank odor that tomato vines have.

But the fruit is delicious, so all is forgiven.

Our single eggplant has set and in a few weeks we will be eating homegrown aubergines. So glad it's only one plant. With 8-10 fruits per plant, we'd be up to our navels in eggplants if we had planted more.

And with three producing tomato plants, we've been giving tomatoes away. Such a contrast to last year when we had maybe two or three fruits per plant, then nothing more. B really has a green thumb when she pays attention to what she's doing. The follow-up (watering, weeding) falls to me, as she flits on to her next project. Each to her own.

The bees have discovered the hummingbird feeders and have been elbowing the hummers out of the way to eat first. I don't suppose there's much that can be done to discourage the bees except to keep the outside of the feeder rinsed off after every refill.

"Pay Bills" was on my To Do list for today but I got ambitious yesterday and did them all. So today is mine to do with as I please. No other commitments, for once.

Yay! Life is excellent.