There is nothing quite like October on the Vineyard. Sunny with low humidity during the day and extra blanket temperatures at night. I guess it’s the reward for a hot and humid summer with tons of traffic and no parking spaces.

I’m still harvesting a ton of food — lucky me. It is astonishing what a tiny package of seeds can do for a person.

To wit: My single planting of butternut squash yielded dozens of perfect fruits. My friend Sharlee did some reading and found that the ideal place to cure squash and pumpkins is on a shelf in the greenhouse. It worked much better than in the field, given the marauding turkeys, slugs, night dampness and who knows what all.

Also, I pulled another row of cow peas. They are a close relative of black-eyed peas. Some were already dried and others need to be eaten or frozen as fresh-shelled beans. How I wish they were not still wadded in an old bedsheet in the middle of the kitchen floor, needing my attention.

There are times when my Grandma Kate’s wise words come back to set me straight, “You’re simply human, go to bed!”

I’m crazy about the tiny pale blue asters that are everywhere right now. I have tons in the gardens and am so happy I resisted the temptation to weed them out in spring when they seemed like a nuisance. The other fabulous plant right now is the red-leafed dahlia. In late winter, I started a package from seed on a propagating mat with no plan in mind. I tucked them here and there into empty spots and now am so pleased; everything else has seen better days.

Violet came home for the three-day weekend. It seems returning college students are only capable of eating and sleeping. She needed it as her schedule on campus is packed full.

Every so often a little segment runs on NPR. It starts with some mood music from the ‘40s or ‘50s, and a person tells what they had for lunch on a job site. I get a kick out of it, so naturally I’ll tell of my lunch today. I chopped some still-wonderful peppers from the garden along with some recently planted radishes into a mix of pickled in apple cider vinegar and honey onions. A couple of hard-boiled eggs and olive oil completed the whole affair.

I try very hard to eat what is available in season and not spend money. A sandwich and a drink purchased on the run seems to set me back around $12.

It’s becoming almost impossible to have any sort of optimism about the state of our union. Why, oh why, do we still have to be force-fed Donald Trump? His supporters are becoming even more unhinged. The election was nearly a year ago, for Pete’s sake.

Then we have politicians doing their very best to out-Trump him. I’m talking to you, Greg Abbott. Between him and Ron DeSantis, the Republicans are becoming the pro-Covid party. I, for one, am sick of wearing masks. People, please: get the shot for all of our sakes.