remembering

Well, that's it for me: last market of the year today. Oh, it will continue for another three weeks or so, but I'm not going to be here. Besides, the flowers will be gone. What's a market without flowers!

I'm bundled up almost as much as the sellers. We didn't freeze over last night, but we came pretty darn close and I feel that morning nip in the air as I cut through the square to get to my favorite vendors.

$15 buys me lots of flowers. Excessive amounts! Going forward I'll have to pick out grocery store blooms for the kitchen table. Until April, when local daffodils will show their spring faces once again.

Remarkably, there is still a stand with corn. In October! I'm glad, but it doesn't feel right. I buy my baker's dozen anyway. We have had a lot of corn this year!

(other things I did buy)

(and more flowers)

(things I did not buy!)

Breakfast. Bakery items, from here:

With flowers... 

... and with Ed.

Today is the first day that I am allowed to get the new Covid booster and we are both wanting it exactly now. Ed's going to be out and about and I'm going to be out and about at the end of the month and we welcome the added protection. But it was hard to find a pharmacy with any available slots for this day. In the end, a small drug store out in a nearby small town agreed to take walk-ins if we came during what had to be their lunch hour. And here's a coincidence -- it is the exact same pharmacy where we got our very first Covid vaccination back on January 25th 2021. Back then, too, I was so grateful! Excited even! Thrilled! It was a turning point for us. 

Of course, millions continued to be very sick with Covid, to die from the virus, but so many were saved by those vaccines! Ed and I never got Covid (to the best of our knowledge), despite our contact with school kids and despite all my travels during lulls in the pandemic. Yes, after that first half year, we had access to great masks. But the vaccinations were our protectors as well. And, importantly, they lifted a good chunk of fear from my shoulders. I felt myself to be responsible for protecting Ed. I still do, since in our DOL (division of labor), I am the one who follows all the literature on Covid. With that vaccination, my relief soared. We weren't totally safe, but we were a hell of a lot safer than before entering that little drug store on that very cold winter day.  

Pandemic milestones: us getting vaccines, kids getting vaccines, surges abating, and here's a big one: learning that I do not have to wash all the groceries after all. That one was huge!

In the afternoon, though it's still on the cool side, I get plenty heated up by working on the weeds. It's great to be outside on this gorgeously crisp day, though digging up weeds from fields that are dry from lack of rain is tough going. In the past, I'd clean the beds with greater care. I remember when putting the flower fields to rest for the winter was a big deal. These days, I shrug my shoulders and weed a little here and think about snipping stuff there, maybe tomorrow, maybe next month, maybe come spring.

Our dinner tonight is odd, but it has a sentimental tone to it: we were driving back from the little town with the small drug store and we happened to pass Fraboni's -- an older Italian deli that was certainly part of my young family's history and, too, was frequented by Ed when he lived alone. Want to pick up some stuff there for dinner? Like what? Maybe sandwiches? Some deli salads? Anything!

For Ed, a sub sandwich is as much a dinner as any other food, and though I'm not exactly on board with that on most days, it's fun to stray occasionally and do something just a touch weird. We get an antipasto salad with meat in it. Meat! We never eat red meat! He picks out a turkey sandwich and I go all out with roast beef. (Last time I had roast beef? Decades ago!) 

Such a beautiful month we are having! Following a beautiful September and a beautiful August. Surely not perfect -- I could have done without the days in the hospital! -- but perfectly beautiful.