Flowers, Seeds, and General Optimism

As I write this, Wimbledon is on, my new ac is on full blast, and I'm examining the upside down Y's marked with dirt on my sunburned feet.  There was an early morning brainstorm session on the next stage of the hand-built compost bins with the Sustainability Committee, then I skipped over to my tiny plot to water the parched darlings.  I'm guessing it was a total of 10 minutes my un-sunblocked feet was exposed to sun.  I wish I didn't burn so easily.  I'm not looking forward to the bumpy rash.  My poor toes.

But I discovered a few gems to share with you here!  I'd noticed teeny purple buds on my eggplants last week but here they are in full bloom:

Here's another one:

Pretty, aren't they?  I'm not sure if the variety my mom got me are the bulbous Italian kind or the long skinny Japanese kind.  I just hope they produce edible eggplants of some sort.

Before I go on, an apology for the high contrast photos.  It was very sunny out (aforementioned poor toes), and I took these with my iPhone.

Also exciting is that my cilantro have gone to seed.  I didn't know this until I googled to find out why my cilantro started to flower and didn't look like all the other gardeners' cilantro.  Apparently, I'd not harvested it properly.  Since I had no recipes I wanted to cook just yet that needed any, I decided to leave the flowers alone.  Many have now turned into coriander seeds:

I picked one to taste and it was deliciously pungent!  This might be a better shot of my thumbnail than the seed, but here it is split open:

This is what the cilantro looked like a few weeks ago, haphazardly growing with little white flowers on top:

The basil also flowered:

What were once cute little perilla seedlings now have strong thick stalks:

The lettuces look like they need some chopstick and twist-tie therapy.  I had no idea they'd get so weirdly tall.  Here they are flopped over, bowing to the mint:

And speaking of mint, they've gone crazy, as I'd expected:

Here's the whole thing as of this morning:

From the other side:

It looks like a crazy jumble of green now.  Remember when it looked like this?