3rd week of August 2007
Today was a lovely rainy cool day, perfect for making spaghetti sauce (27 quarts) without melting everyone in the kitchen. Many of the tomatoes that went into the sauce were beautiful heirloom slicers, some with small dings or splits that made them unsuitable for market and others left over from our venture to the Wooster Farmers Market over the weekend. It was fun being at the market but our hopes of selling lots of neat tomatoes went unrealized since everyone had tomatoes for sale plus most folks have at least a tomato plant in their flowerbed. Green zebras were a hot selling item but the Brandywines and others were all too common at the market. Oh well, the sauce will be extra good this winter. My family members each seem to have their favorite tomato variety and woe to me if I don't make sure Olin gets his Persimmon tomato every supper! 
This is also the time of year I enjoy making beautiful plates of tomatoes to take to carry-ins with mixed colors of tomatoes plus basil, shallots and olive oil - they seem like a work of art almost too pretty to eat.
Another thing I always enjoy checking out at the market are the flowers. The "Flower Lady" had her booth across from ours and what a lovely display she had. Lisianthus bouquets, sunflowers, zinnias, unusual greens along with buckets and buckets of gladiolas. Elizabeth sold some of the mini-bouquets she made for our market stand and used part of the money to buy 2 gladiola stems. Life is good when you use your flower earnings to buy more flowers. I am amazed over and over at how powerful flowers can be in lifting someone's spirit. I also use my flowers as rewards for good advertising and one of my regular veggie customers will be getting a bouquet tomorrow for referring a friend who came for veggies, eggs, ... I'm just hoping the rain lets up so her bouquet won't be too soggy!
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