big roma harvest

I had my biggest ever roma harvest today, 3 1/2 pounds! I had planned to make a roasted vegetable tomato sauce tomorrow, but with the additional tomatoes, I went ahead and used my older romas to make a basic tomato sauce and will work on the roasted sauce tomorrow. I have also harvested 3 lemon cucumbers so far, gave one to Bobbie and the other two I have kept for my mom. There is a chance I may have a pretty good harvest of them and if so, I might try to pickle a few if I can find a recipe that will work with a small amount.

I have gotten nothing done around the house despite the fact that it is way too hot to work outside. We haven't had rain in 10 days now. The grass/weeds are still green but the plants are really suffering and I think I need to up the watering on the camellias. I had some really wilty plants I watered this evening. Tomorrow will be my big watering day and I'm going to try to really soak everything. I got eaten alive by the mosquitos this evening doing the watering and finally broke down and sprayed the yard with the Bug Free Backyard stuff, but only in the shady areas. I hate doing this as I have a really good population of bees this year, which I think is helping the cukes and all the other plants. I've also seen a few ladybugs. I don't want to hurt them, but the mosquito situation just gets worse and worse. Tonight there were CLOUDS of them around me when I bent down to water some of the shrubs. I'm hoping that this evening's spraying will help with the mosquitos and not hurt the bees.

I was playing around on the internet this evening looking at ourdoor lights, as I really want to replace our light. Bellacor was having a big sale and I got a light that looked great online at about 1/3 of its retail price. I hope it is as nice in person. I'm a tad worried about trying to install it, as the current light seems to come through the vinyl on the underside of the porch roof. I'm hoping there is a box under that, so we can easily hook in the new fixture. I do think it would look better if its base was on top of, not under, the vinyl.