This is what I came home with:

The beans are mostly Rattlesnake pole, with pretty purple streaks on the pods.

They have purple flowers and are planted together with Scarlet Runners, which makes for a very pretty tripod. Which you could see if I’d had the foresight to bring my camera with me. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

As you can see, that’s substantially more than a handful. And that’s five cucumbers (counting the curly one), with several slightly smaller ones left on the plants. And some portulaca, and a little baby carrot, and the sage is about 1/5th of the plant.

Ah July.

I think we’ll be eating green beans for a while.

Garlic scapes: spontaneous, not trained to do this!

Nature’s awesome.

There are also pole beans and garlic and asian greens; photos to come.

After that it’s just a matter of chopping some celery and carrots, sautéing in some olive oil, then adding some cubed potatoes and the stock (all done while papa manages the baby), and letting it all simmer for about 15 minutes. That’s just about the right amount of time to soothe a fussy baby.
Score two for mommy-brain.

A few minutes before serving, toss in some chopped green beans, put some cheese on toast or a hearty cracker and call it dinner. This is best done with papa in charge of the baby again.
Score three for mommy-brain.

Now, here’s the good part.

More presence of mind moves a piece of pastured local ham from the freezer to the fridge the same night.
The next day for lunch, heat up the leftover soup with some cubed ham and a few broken up spears of asparagus. This can all be done while the baby has a lovely little lunch-hour nap.
Result:

Full victory for mommy-brain.

I’ve also been working on another quilt. This is more of a “salvage an old comforter and cover the nasty old sofa” quilt than anything else. It’s extremely basic, with squares of various stash fabrics separated by strips of a duvet cover that generously sacrificed its previous identity for the project. The central panel is put together (thanks to the OH looking after His Royal Poopiness for a good chunk of Mother’s Day – hurrah!), and while it’s nothing special, I’m confident it will be more attractive than both the floral comforter I’ll be stuffing it with and the aforementioned nasty old sofa.

(You may notice, if these are the sorts of things that you notice, that I managed to piece it such that no fabrics repeat in a given row or column. Considering the severe case of new-mommy-brain I’m sporting these days, I thought that was quite an accomplishment, though it did require a modest amount of taking-apart and re-assembling to pull it off.)

That is all.

So, yeah, just a little preoccupied here …

But few things in this household have the power to raise ruffs as does the Sunny Spot. Sometimes it’s that patch of floor in the upstairs hall, sometimes the footstool in the living room, sometimes the tabletop (grrr). But most frequently, it’s the Basket. The Basket in the south window, the Basket with the shearling lining, the Basket with the view of the birds in the bushes and the squirrels on the wires, the Basket that’s just the right size for a kitty to curl up in or even sprawl just a little with a chin resting on the edge.

The following is the pictorial evidence of one epic Battle for the Basket. In which the battle is won, and lost again. Or lost and regained, depending on your perspective/degree of fluffiness. The entire battle featuring not a paw raised, nor hiss uttered. Illustration of the sheer power of intimidation.

Yup, there’s just nothing like a good spot in the sun.

First I thought I wanted waffles (thinking of some lovely ones I made for the freezer last weekend), then I thought maybe pancakes, but since we’re out of maple syrup the muffins won out.

Now, a basic muffin recipe is something I don’t actually have in my recipe box, so each time I want to make them I find myself rifling through my cookbooks for a simple recipe to adapt to the ingredients currently residing in my cupboard/fridge, or asking the internet in the hopes of stumbling on a suitable one.

This morning I improvised. I thought to myself “banana bread is pretty much like muffins, and I have a banana bread recipe that I love, so I’ll use that.”

This is that recipe:

I made the following changes:
-substituted about 1 cup of applesauce for the bananas (delicious applesauce my mom made of apples from one of her trees)
-somewhat less sugar (I didn’t actually measure, but I think I used about 1/2 cup)
-added about 1/2 t of baking powder, just because it seemed like the right thing to do (applesauce can sometimes make baked goods a little heavy)
-tossed in about 1/3 or 1/2 cup of chopped dried cherries(leftover from Pie Day) instead of the other options because, well, wouldn’t you?
-reduced the flour (for which I use spelt) by about 1/4 cup and threw in about 1/2 cup of rolled oats, with the intent of keeping a nice grainy chewiness which I like in muffins and can sometimes be reduced by things like applesauce
-at the last minute stuck a banana slice in the top of each one, just because there was half a banana sitting on the counter and I couldn’t resist (it would have been for the irony, but I’m just not that hip)
-baked for 20 minutes as muffins instead of 1 hour as a loaf

And the results?
Delicious.

The texture, sweetness and flavours all just came together in that lucky way that sometimes happens when you really need a good moment to perk up an otherwise lackluster day. The cherries contributed perfect little nuggets of sweet & sour, and the sugars in the applesauce gave an ever-so-slight glaze to the outside, just right for enjoying with a cup of coffee (or in my case a bitter brown roasted barley beverage that is reminiscent of but in no way equal to coffee).

They were so good I had to blog about them. Yup, made my day.

Oh, also had urge for Life Savers, which the OH kindly procured (not as simple a feat as one might think, I guess they’re not that popular anymore).
Consumed entire roll while writing blog post.

Yum.