“How many of you are here for the Love Train?” the lady at the Humane Society asked the waiting crowd. Everyone but me raised a hand. “And you’ve all filled out an application?” she continued. Heads nodded all around. Then she explained the process by which people would be given turns to meet the Love Train animals.
Our Humane Society is a no-kill shelter and highly successful at placing animals. So much so that once or twice a month, it sends staffers south to struggling shelters to bring back dogs for placement up here. And apparently crowds gather at the doors when the Love Train animals become available.
The crowd that day was particularly interested in puppies, and the lady said a number of puppies had arrived on the “train.” I wasn’t dreaming of a puppy though, but of just the right older dog. My honey and I say we’re not looking for a new dog, but we really miss having one. We’ll see how this plays out.
There are crowds at the Thrift Shop these days, too. Changeover is coming. That’s when we clear the shop of the old season’s merchandise to make way for the new. First, everything in the shop is declared half-price. Then, in addition, we sell by the bag. Everything you can fit into one of our bags is available for the price of a bag, which goes down each day. By the third day of the bag sale, the shop is basically empty.
Yesterday was the second day of the bag sale. What made it especially fun was the number of customers shopping with vouchers. We provide social service agencies with vouchers to give to clients who need them. Each one is good for fifty dollars’ worth of merchandise. Bags cost eight dollars yesterday, which meant that one voucher could be used to fill six bags. By the time we closed, there was so little merchandise left that the shop echoed.
Mortgage Lifter. Black Thumb. Pineapple. Lemon Boy. San Marzano. Paul Robeson. Those were just some of the varieties available to all comers last Sunday afternoon at County Farm Park. Community Grow put on a tomato tasting.
Long tables were laden with tomatoes of various ilk. In front of each one sat a paper bowl of cut-up pieces of that variety, a bowl of clean toothpicks, and a discard bowl. Attendees stabbed each sample with a clean toothpick, tasted what they skewered, tossed the toothpick, and formed opinions. You could taste as many kinds as you wanted, and then vote for your favorite. There were dahlias to vote on, too, but they didn’t come with toothpicks.
Results of the voting were to be announced at some later time, but no one seemed keyed up about it. The point of the outing was to admire what Community Grow had raised and learn more about organic gardening, if you had a mind to. That, and to while away part of an August afternoon in pleasant company.
Our neighbors Cory and Tanya shared part of their yard’s autumn bounty with us last night, in the form of dinner. They have so much basil coming along that they’re hard pressed to use it up. They just made pesto, which calls for cups of basil, and that scarcely made a dent in what’s left.
Cory used Zingerman’s farm bread, a whole wheat sourdough, and grilled us sandwiches to order, featuring the pesto, heirloom tomatoes, various cheeses, and bacon for those who wanted it. Not only did the sandwiches taste fabulous, but they were beautiful as well. Tanya decided to make a cake with ingredients in the house, and came up with one that used grapefruit juice and Greek yogurt. It baked up light and moist and mild, with a fine crumb—in short, a revelation. What could be better on a summer evening than breaking bread with friends of long standing?
To top it off, the day ended with a lunar eclipse. Not only did my sweetheart and I not need to leave the house to see it, we didn’t even need to be upright. We could see it from bed, with our heads on the pillows. All we had to do was open our eyes to see the shadow move across the sturgeon moon.
There’s something exciting about eclipses. They’re giant shared experiences. They make you think about what’s happening in the heavens and also about the Yankee in King Arthur’s court. They disrupt the world as we know it, but briefly. “And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
28 August 2026