The Perfect Lunch with a Hungry Baby

I really enjoy the days that I get to spend at home during the summers. Anyone who argues that it isn't fair that teachers get the summers off has never worked as a teacher. Without the mental health break that summer brings, we'd all go crazy. I love these lazy days of summer when I can decide what I feel like doing and then go for it. Today I filled my morning with gardening while Nick took his nap. Surprisingly, he took a really long morning nap today--9-12:30, so I had plenty of time to work outside. I planted some herbs in a planter. . . I'm not sure if I'll be able to bring them in during winter or not, but I like the look of the planter. I also killed off some of the catnip that was taking over and overwhelming the strawberries. I noticed that my zucchini and squash looked a little sad since planting. I wonder if the catnip gave them too much shade? Just to be sure, I did a low level massacre of the catnip plants. This is what the garden looked like this morning after a ton of grass picking, catnip killing, and watering by hand. Our back waterspout is broken, and a hose won't attach to it. So I've been watering the garden and my raspberry plants by hand every day with a watering can. It takes forever, but it's great exercise.

Molly and Tubby were sitting on the porch the whole time, watching me kill their beloved plant. I had to explain to them that I was only cutting some of it. I promised them that they'd always have fresh kitty drugs. Then, just to make them feel less worried about the whole thing, I brought them the pieces I'd cut. Here you can see Tubby accepting my offer happily. I noticed later that he's a cat sitting on a mat decorated with cats.






Now Molly is a little more persistant. She loves catnip so much that she tried pushing open the screen door to get out to it. When I brought her a sprig, she wouldn't stop moving. She rubbed her face in it and purred so hard her whole face actually started vibrating. The picture is a little blurred, but that's what happens when a hat is ecstatic with joy. Kind of like what I feel like after that first sip of coffee in the morning.
I also ended up digging out more sod near the raspberry bushes, and mulching the area so that the grass won't infiltrate as bad. We'll see how that works. Digging out that sod was a wonderful workout. I can feel muscles I'd forgotten I even have. I was very tired and hungry, so I went inside and fixed myself the perfect lunch. I recreated the salad I made yesterday, with spinach, tomato, red pepper, goat cheese, and croutons. Then I had some homemade minestrone (from my freezer), bread with apple butter, and some fruit from the farmers' market. It looked so good I took a picture of it.
Right when I was about to take my first bite, Nick decided to wake up. I distracted him with a banana in one of those feeder thingies. I'm not sure what they're called, but I call them socks. Nick calls them delicious. He tries to stuff the whole thing in his mouth. He ended up eating an entire banana, in pieces, sucked through that sock thingie. For him, eating bananas is serious business.