It’s been a fairly quiet week making for good days to putter around the house. Time for a new tablescape for summer. I decided on a chicken theme with fern green chargers and napkins.

The bowls have roosters on the sides. These are mostly for salad in the summer, but a bowl of my Chilled Corn Crab Soup would be good too. Or ice cream after dinner!

Green napkins are held with white ceramic chicken rings. Every day flatware is used.

The centerpiece is my white ceramic bowl filled with a riot of silk flowers. The colors are matched to the bowls.

We’ll enjoy this table for a few weeks.

Last weekend, we did a drive with the MINI club. We met at a restaurant, then split into two drive groups. One went east on the Blue Ridge Parkway and one went west. We led the east group which was headed to the Folk Art Center.

We stopped for a photo at an overlook.

The parkway views were lovely, with an abundance of green.

At the market, I went a little nuts buying tomatoes. The little ones on the vines looked so yummy, and I bought too many of them. So, the only thing to do was to figure out a way to use them in a dish other than a salad. This recipe is a modified version of a Pork Pomodoro, made to serve two. The recipe is easy, place pork chops in the pan, top with panko mixture, cherry tomatoes, green onions and bake.

You’ll need an oven safe pan to make these, and I like to use my cast iron skillet. Bringing it out of the oven, the aroma is so yummy!!

Pork Chops with Cherry Tomatoes For Two

1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
!/4 teaspoon garlic salt
!/4 teaspoon oregano
!/4 teaspoon lemon pepper
!/4 teaspoon thyme
olive oil
2 pork chops, 1/2-inch thick
4 cherry tomatoes (or more!), quartered
1 green onion, chopped

Preheat oven to 350º. Mix panko and next four ingredients. Add in 1 teaspoon olive oil and mix with a fork until all the crumbs look moist. Coat the bottom of the pan with olive oil using a brush or paper towel. Place chops in skillet, top with panko mixture. Top with quartered cherry tomatoes and chopped green onion. Bake 30 minutes.

Serve with your choice of sides. I usually make rice or potatoes for My Sweet Babboo to go with chops. This time, I had some leftover herbed rice that I mixed with some leftover corn, and then made fresh steamed cauliflower with a bit of cheese on top. Download the recipe – Pork Chops with Tomatoes for Two

On the veranda, I’ve been keeping an eye on the wren nest. At the beginning of this week, I went out in the early morning to find the female sitting in it. She took off before I could get her picture. Peering into the dark recesses of the nest, there are now clearly four eggs. Getting a picture of them is difficult as it is so dark inside the nest. This time I tried holding a flashlight rather than using the camera flash. She’s been sitting on the nest all week, but every time I try to get her picture in the nest, she flies off. We should have baby birds in about another week. I’ll keep you updated on that.

Just below the pot with the nest, the white petunia is blooming well. It has about six blooms, all pristine white like these.

The impatiens are growing and blooming profusely.

The purple color of the verbena is gorgeous.

It looks lovely next to the deep pink calibrachoa.

White begonias spill from the birdcage. This plant was cut back just 2 months ago and is coming back strong.

The geranium that I rooted then planted in a pot a month ago is now blooming. It didn’t take long at all to produce a beauty.

The purple petunias in the hanging baskets are trailing nicely and blooming well.

The lobelia flowers are such a vibrant blue.

I need some yellow flowers to accent all the purple and pink. The seeds I planted didn’t come up, so I’ll see about adding some soon. I like the yellow and white superbelles, but I didn’t buy any this year. I’ll see what the garden center has.

What’s happening at your place as we head into summer? Or for my southern hemisphere readers, into fall?