This year the new veggie in my now tiny garden is the Spanish pepper Pimiento de padrone. These little peppers are a very popular ingredient in a super simple tapas dish which I made for lunch yesterday and again as an appetizer for dinner. I had to buy some plants from Amazon.com in the spring and now they are producing like crazy. Basically, your fry these in a bit of olive oil till they brown and get soft, drain, sprinkle with coarse salt and eat with bread. I dipped  the sourdough bread in the cooking oil which took on the flavor of the peppers. The fascinating things about these peppers is that genetically, they will produce mild and slight hot pepper so biting into one is always a surprise! The cherry tomatoes were just topped with some mozzarella and basil, and drizzled with olive oil and salt and peppered. Next year I'm only going to plan one cherry tomato plant.

In addition to cooking the rest of my day was spent running around town for some food and garden shopping, and a bunch of other stops including Lowe's where they just couldn't match the paint for our stucco trim, so I'm giving up on the idea of being able to just spot touch up those areas and we'll have to get professional painters in here to do all the stucco trim in our atrium. I'm hoping we can get all these house and studio jobs done by labor day; but something new like the broken garage door panel, seems to come up every week!

Some time today I have to make ratatouille since my garden has given me eggplant, zucchini, bell peppers and tomatoes. It will depend on when the garage door people come to replace that panel, and then I have to go pick up some more pottery supplies. That one pug of earthenware has finally arrived after a six week wait!

This week I've got to finish up some gardening. The fall veggie starts are in and I have a flat to plant at our son and daughter-in-laws house.   I was hoping this new automatic watering on my containers plants would save me a lot of time but with these 100+ degree days (it was 103 at 4pm yesterday) I've had to hand water as well, so I need to get the gardener to increase the water on those. First thing yesterday morning I got 3 more new pots planted with ferns for near our front door. A fountain for that area is on the way and that will complete that area for this year.

The handyman did not do the insulation in the studio attic space the other day, but did  finish up a few other things in the studio and the house. He's coming at 7am Wednesday to do the insulation. Let's hope he means it this time. :-(

I've decided to not wait to see if that insulation works with keeping the heat down in the studio, and I'm going to bite the bullet and get the dual heat/air conditioning installed. I've been waiting long enough to get in that studio to get to work.