No shopping today - Girlchild is still sleeping off her post-finals exhaustion. That's fine with me, I have no energy or enthusiasm to battle the mall today either.

So as long as I am home today, and at long freaking last - pictures:



The yard, with sod. It's far from done - there's much planting to do along the fence, etc., but we are now into a daily thunderstorms pattern (it's already clouding up out there) which is great for the sod but bad for yard work. The patio area still contains bags of trash - the garbage men will take only 10 bags of yard trash a week, so I have at least two more weeks of draggin' out bags on Tuesday evening before I get Patio Guys in to put down a patio.


The vegetable garden is doing well. Here's the Little Pepper Plant that Could:



This plant reminds me of Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree - it's maybe a foot and a half high and has been nibbled by insects, but it's putting out enormous green bell peppers. It's comical.

And then we have the star of my ratty little garden:



This Roma tomato plant is putting out fruit like a crazy thing! Proof that even a lousy and haphazard gardener can get lucky.

To change the subject from my endlessly fascinating postage-stamp of a yard, (if anyone is still reading and hasn't dozed off by now), here's a great site I found through Catholic Relief: very worthwhile shopping destination. (Eventually, when I re-work the blog I'm going to make an index of sites like this one.) I have an obsession with bags (as my daughter will attest, I can't own too many) and I went nuts here because the prices are so fair and the cause is so worthy. I bought THREE:

Shipping was amazingly fast, they arrived well-packed, and with a little story card about the women who made them. Also check out their very special chocolate!

They are really well-made and would make great shopping totes, purses, or knitting bags - though two are sisal so I'd advise storing the project in a plastic zipper storage bag to avoid snaggage. The brown basket bag for eleven bucks is a bargain - it's very nicely made and smooth inside. All three are much more lovely in person - the strap on the multi-colored bag (the one on the left, it's hard to see but it's a rich chocolate brown, cream and black) is a tad long for me, I can use it as is, but I can get the guy at the shoe repair place to cut it down and stitch it up again a bit shorter if it really bothers me. I'm going to add a couple of Purseket liners to the bigger ones, I think - animal print liners would kick butt in these bags.

I am a felted bag fanatic, but even I have to admit that it's kinda weird to carry one in Florida in the summer. I'd been toting my office extras in a Kureyon booga bag, but I think the black and white sisal tote will look a heck of a lot more appropriate at this time of year.