Attack of the cucumbers

When I planted my garden this spring, I just planted what DP would like to eat and what I thought might grow. I didn't know much about anything, frankly. Now, I've discovered the horrible truth - cucumbers are the mafia of my garden. They've been elbowing everyone else, and now they're twisting their tentacles around my other plants! The flax has already fallen prey, and the asparagus is next. Only the sunflowers and the green beans seem strong enough to survive the onslaught.

The green beans, by the way, are doing wonderfully! I picked a bowlful of them for dinner yesterday, and cooked them in a couple tablespoons of salted water. I would have picked more, but I was being eaten alive by the mosquitoes. When they started biting my face, I knew I had to flee.

Now that it's July, I need to dig into my silk shawl. I still don't have pictures for you, but they're coming soon. DP just notified me that he'll need to work through the night for the rest of the week, so I should actually be able to get some rows done! Even with all my swatching, I still haven't settled on the pattern for the lace band. I guess I have a while to go before I work the band, but I'd like to be settled on the pattern by the time I get to it. I need a pattern that gives the impression of leaves or trees, is 9, 18 or 36 stitches wide and preferably has plain purl or knit rows every other row. The leaf pattern I planned to use looked wrong with the feather and fan, so I've been reworking it and playing around with some openwork cable-y things. Oh, what a world.