My early morning rounds culminated in the gathering of three beautiful big tomatoes and a few little orange heirloom tomatoettes. Nice flavor; very low acidity.

After a cup of coffee I went grocery shopping and smirked at the prices of tomatoes. Organically grown tomatoes of the size I had just harvested were more than $1 apiece. Each. Not per pound.

Next year, I'm growing more than tomatoes and melons. Food is getting so expensive that growing my own will make a lot of financial sense as well as satisfying my taste for fresh organic produce.

I'm starting to think about a couple of laying hens, too. You can take the girl off the farm, but she's always a country girl at heart.

I was reminiscing today about my kitchen garden in India and how successful it was with the village women. It had never been intended as a "project" but that's what it turned out to be, and very productive, too. Something about free food, grown by your own hands.

The hardest part is keeping the cats out of the garden. If I expand next year, I'll have to come up with some sort of fencing strategy. Time enough to develop something, though I can start planting winter stuff as soon as it cools down in October.

As for the rest of Saturday, it was the usual stuff: groceries, laundry, meds for SO, and so on and so forth. The cats got bored following me around and nested on the bed.