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i probably didn't need to visit the garden today since it was thundering during the time i was there. but sometimes it thunders and we don't get any rain so it couldn't hurt giving the plants a precautionary drink of water.

the tomatoes have grown so out of control, it's hard to even know if there are any tomatoes to pick. particularly my two largest tomatoes, which have been swallowed up by a thicket of wild morning glory vines. fortunately ripen tomatoes are more noticeable because they're red; or in the case of the special tomato plant julie gave me, they're an orange-yellow color. i managed to pick one red and one yellow tomato.

at this stage in the season, i can finally distinguish the difference between the cosmos and the ragweed. both plants look almost identical, but their flowerheads are very different: cosmos have the traditional round buds while the ragweeds form these cylindrical columns of soon-to-be pollen distributors.

i picked a plastic grocery bag worth of old basil leaves from my garden. hopefully by pruning them back i can get a second crop. the leaves i picked don't look very pretty but hopefully they can cook well. i also picked off some salsa peppers. i was going to leave them on the plants until they turned red but my mother wanted some for cooking. i was surprised how long they were, more like cucumbers than peppers! i also picked a single "giant" thai hot pepper just to try it out. next i went to julie's garden to water her plants. i pruned back her african basil, snipping off most of the flowers off in the hopes of producing more leaves. it's my last day of garden care since julie returns to town tomorrow. i only really needed to water just that one time. besides the basil, i also took two cucumbers from her place, as well as 3 peppers. and i ate a cherry tomato will watering her plants. afterwards i went to market basket to buy a package of frozen strawberries for my smoothies.

had a busy day, the client have started to ramp up the production schedule. half of the day was spent coding, the other half answering e-mails and testing movie clips they kept on sending me. at least the communication is all electronic; i absolutely hate it when clients call me on the phone for anything that's not an absolute emergency. towards the end of the day i knew i wouldn't make the deadline so i told them i'd give them something by monday morning. but they were determined to get something in their hands by today so i sent them what i had, which seemed to satisfy them for the time being. the good thing about a monday deadline is i buy myself some more time; the bad thing is i end up working on the weekend. fortunately most of it is done, just need some tweaks.

by late afternoon the sky darkened and the rain started to fall. thunder, lightning, the works, but still rather mild compared to some of the street flooding storms in weeks past. in hindsight, i probably didn't need to water the gardens after all.

for lunch, i made an omelette: 2 eggs folded with some cheddar cheese and salsa. washed it all down with a smoothie (banana, frozen strawberries, passion fruit juice) followed by some watermelon slices. for dinner, your basic ramen. for whatever reason, i tend to eat the most ramen on friday nights. washed it all down with some diet root beer (accidental purchase), followed by more watermelon slices.

if you're not watching mad men, you're missing scenes like little girl playing with a dry cleaning bag!