To Arnie: Thank you.

It's been a while since I've written here and I've been feeling the itch all week. I just didn't know what to write about. Dave and I recently registered Jonathan in daycare for the fall, and I was thinking of writing about what pushed me to choose this particular center: their revamped menu of food items that consist only of organic, seasonal, and locally source food products. This was exciting for me, but I think I'll save that post for when I actually see (and perhaps taste) the food in September.
Speaking of organic, seasonal, and locally sourced, my septuagenarian neighbor Arnie, who runs Barton Orchards in Poughquag, New York, generously supplied me with huge bags of yellow plums, golden delicious apples, and his famous sweet white corn. And, in true Arnie fashion, offered me a can of beer to go with them while he let Jonathan run through his sprinklers in the late summer afternoon.

A beautiful landscape of yellow and green on my kitchen counter.

Unsurprisingly, as a huge fan of Tobias Smollett and Jonathan Swift, I have frequent flights of misanthropy fueled by the news and my daily interactions with American society. However, it's good-hearted, hardworking, honest, fun-loving, big-laughing, beer-offering, porch-talking, ox-strong farmers like Arnie who remind me that the world is not a bag of shit all the time. It can be a bag (or three) of gorgeous produce that feeds my family.

P.S. What in the world am I going to do with all these plums? Suggestions?