A late season bounty...

Today was a bountiful one.

A bounty of medical maladies started our day...I have a nasty cold, Steve pinched something in his back looks like a question mark, and Kailin's lower left eyelid was inexplicably swollen. Colby has a bruise on his cheekbone but it otherwise (for now) healthy.

Our second bounty today is a bounty in a different sense. The Jeep has been in the driveway with a flat tire for a little over a week now. That alone wouldn't give us pause, but the other major issue we've faced with the Jeep as of late is that if you hit a bump, the front end begins to shake uncontrollably. That one worried us - both from a safety standpoint and from a monetary one. The Jeep has 191k miles on it and she's been quite a workhorse and would be well deserving of retirement if some major malady afflicted her. Unfortunately, we just don't have the money for a car payment right now. So retiring Bessie would mean becoming a one car family for the foreseeable future. We took her in to the garage last night with a note explaining the situation and asking that they call us with an estimate before doing any work. To our great joy, the verdict came in and the bill should be about $180 all told. A far cry from what we had imagined. What a delight and a blessing!

The final bounty of the day came from our former neighbor's garden. They've moved to Florida and their house is as yet unsold. We've been given the go ahead to reap whatever we'd like. My intention today was to gather some green beans, a butternut squash, a couple of tomatoes, and some rhubarb. I'd spied just a few raspberries out the kitchen window the other day and planned to grab those as well. To my great joy there was at least a pint of berries out there! What a late season surprise that was! The kids did most of them in for dinner, but seeing the delight on Colby's face as I brought them in (he said "hi" to them repeatedly and beckoned them with his hand....beyond adorable!) was well worth every berry I don't eat!

Thanks be to God for this bountiful day! (well, maybe not the bounty of medical maladies - but that has given us two full days of family time so I really can't complain about that one, either!)