Keb, how is your hand feeling? Sleep any better last night? Do you have a good reading lamp by your bed? And has your lung thing cleared up, Charmion?

Today's errands included posting a box of three pounds of my garden okra to a friend in Michigan. She grew up in the next county south of here and a few years ago was bemoaning the lack of good okra on the shores of Lake Michigan, so as a lark I filled a priority box and shipped it. Three days later the okra was a hit and she pickled some and fried the rest. It took a couple of more years before I had enough okra to do it again (last year no garden, the year before the okra languished out there.) From here out whatever I pick will be used for pickled okra and occasional fried.

While picking okra this morning a juvenile grasshopper landed in my box, so I clonked it with my pruners and walked around to the front porch and tossed it into Ms. Argiope's web. After a couple of tries she got it. A few minutes later I opened the front door to take a look and Pepper decided to bark up a storm - when she started that the spider dropped her breakfast, it swung a few inches away in the web. Later I peeked out and she was again dining on the grasshopper, but clearly neither she nor I are fond of Pepper's barking.

Last week I rolled coins as I watched TV, and today at the credit union they said they don't take them rolled but they do have a machine in the lobby that counts and deposits the entire amount. Noisy, but it worked. In the end it only spit back two coins, a Canadian quarter and a kind of rumpled US penny. And when I went to Costco after that my bill was exactly $2 more than I put in the bank. I'm still ahead by $178 in savings, but it's funny how it doesn't feel that way. I have the empty roll papers, but if they will count it without all of the trouble, no point in rolling them.

Last night right before it started raining I sprayed the tomato bloom spray on flowers on two of the plants, hoping for some fall tomatoes. I don't know which is more unusual, still getting tomatoes here in August, or all of the small rain showers we've had this month.