Well, it's a good thing we all love salad, because our lettuce crop has required us to eat up! A couple of us snagged a bit of the Bibb variety in the past couple weeks for dinner. But then, we had one of our impromptu neighborhood dinner parties to watch Big Brown vie for the Triple Crown. This called for a big pile that we all could partake of. It was fabulous. It felt good to enjoy some of the fruit, er, vegetables, of our labor.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that the heat has hit hard. And none of us can stand doing the gardening chores for more than a few minutes at a time. We decided to rotate duties, including weeding, watering and harvesting, on a weekly basis. It seemed the easiest and fairest and most flexible way to do things. So far so good.

Swiss chard, arugula and more radishes are ready. And it looks like we'll have tomatoes soon, as many of the plants have blossoms. And the plants themselves are big enough that we needed to add support via bamboo and twine similar to the idea in the March issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine and listed as one of her regular vegetable garden maintenance tips. Cheaper than tomato trellises sold at the garden center. In our case, free thanks to a stash Jenn had from a previous wedding (remember: she's a floral designer by trade) And prettier, too!