A Newborn Screenplay and Vegetable Gardening

Installed Final Draft onto my laptop yesterday, and just played around with it for a while. Before I knew it, I had 8 pages of a draft. It's my third novel I'm interested in adapting. More than likely nothing will ever come of it, besides being a writing exercise, but that's OK with me. For a few hours yesterday I had fun with writing, and it's been ages since I could say that. I'm going to take time out every day, starting today, to work a little on this. If nothing else, I'm sure I'll learn some new things.

Meanwhile, we're both getting past our recovery from the road trip. Funny how much a trip like that will take out of you. I don't remember having this trouble when I was younger. For a whole day after we got home, I just moled around, watching TV or reading magazines that had come in the mail. Today, I'm finally feeling really rested and ready to take on housekeeping again.

Vegetables are beginning to come in from the garden. I'm already overloaded on zucchini. I have made zucchini bread, a chicken/zucchini casserole, and a veggie medley featuring, yes, zucchini and it still continues to pour in. I think zucchini must be the most prolific squash type of all. Still waiting for enough scalloped squash to do something. I've got two small ones so far, and have had two yellow squash also. We did pick a mess of green beans when we got home and ate those last night. They were super good. Tomato plants are so loaded down some of them are drooping, but the tomatoes are all still green. Like years past, they're going to all come ripe at the same time -- I already see it -- and I will be desperately hunting for things to do with them or people to give them to, sigh. I wait all year for good tomatoes and this always happens. We even planted them in stages but it doesn't seem to matter. They ripen when they want to, and it seems they all want to at the same moment. I have so far picked only two that were beginning to blush and brought them in to ripen on the counter.

Bugs, bugs, bugs! I've never seen so many caterpillars as I've seen this year, and grasshoppers. My god, you walk through the yard and they're like fleas. Mosquitos are so bad we're keeping spray in the wellhouse, and it's the first thing we do if we're going to spend more than a few moments outside. And even still, they're buzzing around you and making a fuss. I moved some of the plants back out to their stands, and on the way, a big toad hopped out of one. I told him to go forth and procreate! We need lots of toads, lizards, and birds to help us thin down this bug crop we have this year. Rain is wonderful, but rain also brings out the pests.

And to think, I was only worried about armadillos before. Seems like years ago.

Onward ....