It's too darned hot

I am completely worn out! i need a rest from work which i think will happen next week as i finish for a month for a"holiday". I will of course still be working on the house if that counts?
We have been starting at 6am and finishing at 2pm because of the heat. It really is darned warm, the temperature hasn't really dropped below 30° during the day and yesterday it hit 39° in the shade and a boggling 51° on the terrace. That's 123°F in old money so to speak.
The cat doesn't know what to do with herself and as you can see she tries to find the coolest place to sleep that she can. This was just after i had watered the flowers in the pot she just climbed in made herself comfortable and within seconds was fast asleep!
The garden is going mad, the courgettes are being extremely prolific, 4 plants have given us kilo's of the things so it is courgette soup, baked, stuffed and made into pickle and still we have a load left. Anybody know any good recipes for courgettes? the melons are growing well and the cucumbers are producing in moderate numbers, raspberries are coming to fruit and the butternut squash is loaded with flowers. Beetroot was nice and at last the tomatoes are going red. Disasters; the runner beans have produced a huge number of flowers but no beans...something is munching the flowers and the Fennel has been completely stripped by the caterpillar of the swallowtail butterfly. The broccoli started to flower and then went bannanas and bolted overnight so it seemed. All in all though i think for our first year as virgin gardeners not too bad. Now, what can i do with this next lot of courgettes? 

Asiatic lily

It has been HOT HOT HOT...38° in the shade and it managed to get to 48° in the sun. We are spending a lot of time watering the vegetable garden in the evenings ( about one hour) and are hoping for great things from the courgettes and tomatoes. The cauliflowers were a bit of a failure, they came up ok but then just as they were developing nicely wham, they bolted and some got eaten by something or other! The runner beans are loaded with flowers and we wait expectantly to see the beans come forth.
This Asiatic lily seems to be enjoying the weather though and has produced some beautiful flowers. The cat has taken to sleeping all day and going out all night when it has cooled down. ( 23°) I have made some fly screens for the bedroom windows so that we can sleep with the windows open and not get moths or bats flying into the room. Yes that's right a bat flew into the bedroom in the early hours and we had a great time trying to catch it and put it back outside. it wasn't that happy at being caught in a towel and when i hung the towel out the window it wouldn't let go!! Eventually after a little shake, off it flew and back to bed we went!

Life in the country is fun isn't it?