My neighborhood is different now in the mornings when I walk, everybody’s up and out and walking the dog and walking the kids to school. It’s not all empty and sleepy like it was in the summer.
In my twenties I was a fervent proponent of the belief that men and women are exactly the same underneath; that our brains are the same, just a lot of learned behaviors on top. It wasn’t until I had sons that I came over to the more common belief that we are simply wired different. I began to appreciate my father’s view – he would’ve been equally happy if either my brother or I had decided to follow in his footsteps and become doctors – but he was convinced that we would’ve made different doctors. My mother, on the other hand, was sure that my brother would never make a doctor at all. Having observed him turning green in hospitals and around sick people, she told my dad that my brother was empathetic – he feels everyone’s pain – while I was more sympathetic, more like my dad, and tried to understand everyone’s pain. Moot point now, since neither of us entered the medical profession.
Anyways, I was reminded of this Friday when I walked past three little boys and their liberal looking parents with the dog. My theory has always been that the soundtrack in little boys’ brains is something along the lines of, “he shoots, he scores”, like basketball or hockey, with lots of “pchhoo, pchhoo, pchhoo” type shooting noises. These kids all had on t-shirts with frogs and other gentle animals, and one of them was named Hawthorne, a totally generic, neither female nor male, type name, but the middle one in the row of three was saying, “and it’s this really big gun that shoots really big bullets”. Ever the fascination of the male of the species.
It’s been really rainy, so huge crazy mushrooms have been popping up everywhere.
composite of the mushrooms in my yard, under the bush that’s under the kitchen window
And unofficially fall, so some fall foods are now at the farmers’ market and in my CSA box. Melon, peaches, and tomatoes are still summer – delicata squash ad plums beginning fall. Those tomatoes are from my annual 25-pound box that I order from my CSA – when they offer them; last year they didn’t. I processed them last night: 6 approximately 3-cup containers of diced tomatoes, about the same amount as the 28-ounce cans from the grocery store; 2 quarts of puree; I quart of Marcella’s tomato butter sauce; one quart of roasted tomato and red pepper sauce.
Today’s farmers’ market haul