Wild Plums © Marek Kosmal | Dreamstime.com

It is our first really cold day here.  Fingerless glove weather, wrap a scarf around your neck weather.  At the Farmers Market I finally got my knives sharpened, and bought okra, spinach, strawberries, peppers, chili, mushrooms and a pumpkin.  The pumpkin I’m going to try in an Indian dish.  It’s the time of the Nine Day Festival in South India, when doll displays are built, chickpeas and coconut salads made, and women visit one another.  Yesterday I lit the light.

After the market, I went to the store, and on the way back, I noticed that bicyclists don’t stop for stop signs.  Maybe they pause minutely?  What’s more perplexing is that they don’t stop for street lights.  They carefully look both ways and run the red light.

Today, from my window, I can see an apple tree brimming with apples.  Easy to climb as well, and old, for a brick driveway was built around it.  Closer to home is a plum tree, loaded with fruit.

I transplanted a geranium yesterday.  From the soil, out plopped a plum, the work of an industrious squirrel.  I now eye the other plants I brought in, and wonder what surprises they contain.  Now I know the reason a squirrel leaped onto the fence and noisily ate a plum in front of me.