I've just poked through the photos at Charmion's house - it's nice to see the rooms you've talked about and the pieces of furniture discussed. The music room, that Mission style bed frame, the place where your patio was disrupted for the work and how tidy the basement looks now, the kitchen after the renovations, etc. I love that huge tree in the back corner. Good luck with all of the fuss of having the house listed and being viewed. It's a plan to emulate: decluttering, renovating, and getting set to sell. #Props

I put in a garden pretty soon after moving into this house, and most years I've grown tomatoes and often there are some ripe by the first day of summer. We formed a welcome-to-summer tradition of the Soltice BLT. Or as close as we could come to it. Today my daughter and I had a picnic at a shaded table on her museum grounds (today is heavily overcast, so not scorching hot like most of July). I toasted the gluten-free bread ahead, sliced the super-ripe homegrown tomato, cut up lettuce, bacon fried and in its own box, had a squirt bottle of mayo, and when it is assembled, the magic touch of squashing the sandwich together at the end (my daughter insists I squash her sandwich - "It's how the love gets in.") The sandwiches were excellent and that tomato did not disappoint. You simply cannot purchase a tomato in a store that tastes like one ripened on the vine in the yard. I had a spare tomato that went home with her and will be sliced for her wife's July 4 faux-meat burger.

Last week we talked about the lack of fruit on her tomato plants and I reminded her about using the blossom set product (I have Green Light "Tomato Bloom Spray") you can spray on the flowers. Most of the fruit that forms has no seeds but is otherwise good. She apparently went nuts and got all of the flowers she could find. She tells me her plants are now loaded with fruit (last year she didn't have many, and was determined to do better this year). I pace myself; I also don't have a lot of fruit, but about once a week I go spray more blooms to spread out the harvest. This stuff has been around forever, and is a gardener's best friend if the crop looks like it is going to be scant.

Working on a few things this afternoon so I can take the next couple of days off from the work-from-home job. I need to get into the sewing studio tonight.