What Another Morning Brought

 It was quiet and moist and foggy this morning. I walked out to dump the kitchen scraps on our neighbor's compost and a shimmer in the pine trees caught my eye.

Another morning of small moments: the most fragile of constructions, the sturdiest of homes.

What One Morning Brought

 Earlier this week, I cut off a soft portion of a late tomato. It has broken open—the tiniest of breaks—and was weeping gently, so I sliced it off and tossed it into the small compost bowl I keep on the counter. The bowl has a lid, and I snapped it into place.

In the morning, a surprise greeted me:

Within the warmth of the lidded compost bowl, the weeping tomato turned into something else.

I was entranced. I was fascinated with its beauty and delicacy. I grabbed my camera and started snapping. 

I know. It's just mold. I get that. But in the early morning light, it was a wisp of a unicorn's forelock, a bit of fairy hair, a thing of beauty.

And that makes it a joy forever.

Observations about September Money

I see that in writing about my August food expenditures, I did not even make predictions about September. 

As it turns out, September food dollars came in under the $180.00/month I set so optimistically back in the start of this year. How much under? A lot. Total dollars spent were $151.38, all on food. I think this is the first month ever we have not made any expenditures for common household items. 

Year-to-date average? $219.32. I've done the math. There is no way we will average $180.00 a month for the year with only three months remaining. As I have observed before, the pandemic threw monkey wrenches in our grocery buying that I could not have predicted. 

I will add that we had an eating out expenditure in September, the first in months! Two scoops of Graeter's ice cream (a regional ice cream chain). I had lemon sorbet; I don't remember what Warren ordered. Why ice cream out of the blue? Because I needed dry ice to ship blood (don't even ask and no, I did not ship blood after all was said and done) and every Graeter's sells dry ice for $1.75 a pound. Since we had to be there to buy the dry ice, why not treat ourselves as well? 

That lemon sorbet was absolutely delicious.

The garden continues to putter along. I predicted last month that we would likely have zucchini until the first hard frost. Nope. Most of the plants started dying of old age in mid-September and I yanked all but one out. That one had a few potential zucchini at the time. I picked one (and gave it to an out of town friend) and left the other, which never developed into anything more than a twisted and skimpy squash, so I let it go. We have about 35 quarts of sliced zucchini in the freezer, and several packets of grated for baking, so with all we ate or baked fresh or gave away, I can't complain about the zucchini being done for the year. I am still picking tomatoes, albeit at a very slow rate. They are reluctant to ripen in the waning sun, preferring instead to go soft. 

The last zucchini

I am also restocked in both cinnamon and canned pumpkin, whatever that shortage was about. 

Even though we are early in October, I see that the food dollars will likely be higher. We did a major restocking at Aldi a few days ago, and with the limited other purchases we have already made, we are closing in fast on the September figure, let alone the $180.00 goal. 

Let's see what the month brings.