The unusually rainy weather is continuing, dropping both buckets of rain and cooling the temperature to daily highs in the mid to high 80 degrees F. The tomatoes are reveling in the warmth and daily showers, setting fruit like mad. Now I've got dozens of tomatoes racing to ripen all at once.

The feast has begun with the first trickle of ripening tomatoes. The yellow tomatoes took an early lead with only one red Roma tomato among the golden beauties. It still isn't enough to stop coveting each and every fruit, though, and I dithered through a bout of tomato angst when I discovered one golden treasure nearly devoured by some furry varmint.

I had been watching that tomato closely, admiring its plump, well-rounded shoulders turning to a satisfying gold. Most of it was tucked under the foliage by the other fruits in the cluster, shielding it from the sun. That is usually a good thing, given that they ripen from the bottom up. It protects them from the elements while leaving the exposed top as a reliable indicator of the fruit's ripeness.

Finally the great moment arrived. The top reached that rich hue indicating that the feast was at hand. I went out at lunchtime to pluck the succulent beauty, my mouth already watering. I cupped my fingers around it gently to lift it from the plant only to feel my fingers squish into a sloppy mess under the fruit. Horrors! Blossom end rot claiming the fruit when the earlier fruits had been fine, perhaps?

No! Only the upper slice of the tomato remained, the rest consumed by some wild pest safely hidden under the thick foliage while the cats snoozed through the rain indoors. A few ants foraged for the pitiful remains, but clearly they couldn't have been responsible for this infamy. The most likely culprit was a rat or some squirrel eating whatever it could find. My sympathies for the cuteness of their spring youngsters instantly evaporated.

Fortunately, two more tomatoes ripened two days later, so Mom and I had a delayed tomato feast with the promise of more to console us. If the supply gets more abundant later as it appears from the numbers of ripening tomatoes, we might not begrudge the squirrels a few. The rats will never willingly get anything from the garden, though. We have too many problems with them to tolerate any mercy towards their kind.

The cats have strict orders to annihilate any furry thing with tomato on its breath, but usually their only tomato-scented prey is me when I'm out in their garden. My slow-moving ankles are far easier prey than a swift young rat darting among plants too thickly planted for a cat's overfed bulk to slip easily after them. Even now, they are napping in the house, sleeping off their cat food. Once again I remind myself that they are so lucky that they got in good with this family when they were kittens as I reach over to pat one that just jumped into the chair next to me. He's washing his fur without even a shred of tomato angst for those unprotected treasures in his garden. I must dither on alone until the much hoped-for tomato glut assures a steady supply in a few weeks. Then I go into tomato angst part two, when I have to figure out how to preserve or give the excess away.

At least the zucchinis are also at the same stage, just beginning to set a few fruits but not a bothersome number. The first one got sliced into a salad, still tender and mildly sweet enough to nestle among the tomato chunks instead of going into a soup pot. That is one bonus of growing your own, being able to snatch them from the plants at their youthful best instead of getting toughened green clubs at the produce market. There is another one nearly ready to pluck, and the plants are blooming well so there should be more. So far the dreaded squash borers haven't bothered this planting.

The crape myrtles are flaunting their pink and lavender flowers well now. They're a late bloomer in this garden, usually starting when summer does. It is a natural marker that the day length has reached its summer peak and the days will shorten even though the temperatures will still remain high for weeks. They'll keep going until frost, lifting fluffy clusters of delicate ruffled petals high over the bushes long after most of the other plants have finished and gone back into plain green garb.

The patchwork vest is coming along and looking like it really ought to have sleeves to become a jacket. I got the front closure ribbing knitted and I'm working on crocheting around the buttonholes to finish them. I poked the buttons through the unfinished buttonholes to admire the effect. The wide ribbing is about five inches across, enough to turn down around the neck as a wrapped collar.

It is heavy enough to wear as a jacket alone instead of a vest under a winter coat. Now I have to figure out what pattern to use to make sleeves garish enough to go with the rest of it. I'm running low on the brown yarn I used to make the front ribbing, but there is still enough to make sleeve ribbings and mix it in with the other yarn leftover from the body patches. I'm going to knit both sleeves on twin sets of needles and match the patterns as I go so I don't run out of yarn on one sleeve without completing the matching pattern on the other sleeve.