I have carefully distributed garden produce to friends and neighbors this month, trying not to overwhelm anyone with the volume offered. Two eggplants (aubergine) and about a pound of okra given away to two friends on Monday. Six jars of okra pickled now in my pantry. Today I'm headed to a reception where I know there are a couple of okra eaters so I'll put some in quart zip lock bags and take them along. The anecdote about dragging a wagon full of large zucchini (courgette) down the street after dark and stashing them on people's porches probably isn't an urban legend. ;-)

The ex came over so I made lunch of leftovers. I was running low on lids for my little Rubbermaid storage containers and realized they were all in the fridge. Assembling a small eggplant Parmesan and a small Caprese salad emptied two containers, I emptied one with a single hard boiled egg (a snack for the dogs since it was a bit old), etc. Two more eggplant out of the way after I roasted them and made a batch of babaghanouj that we sampled then I put in the fridge in a larger Rubbermaid container. I still came out ahead.

A friend shared an obituary from National Geographic about Hilaree Nelson, who died this week in Nepal. My friend shared this because what we see here with Nelson's full and vigorous life as a climber and ski mountaineer is the culmination of a struggle that Jane and I struggled to achieve in our late teens and 20s - making mountaineering (climbing, backpacking, rock climbing) a regular sport hobby at a time when mountaineering was still in general considered a sport for men. We had the same technical skills as the guys, but had to adapt it to our size and pace. At the same time I lived an active life as I worked in the woods as the only woman on the crew most times, and took a lot of grief for it. These days there are easily as many women working fires and forestry as there are men, and a lot of competitive climbers. It's a shame that Nelson didn't live a good long life, to retire and reach the time to have her worn out knees replaced like I did recently, because chances are really good that she was really hard on them, as I was.