Backblogging again & A few of my favorite things

I posted a lot of entries I had been working on over the last several weeks today. Highlights of this week: Mo the camp counseller is home from her summer job. Anna the office girl has another week of work to go. Our house is full of the twins and their friends, cooking, eating and playing cards and I have promised to teach them Hearts before they all go back to college. We are continuing our festival of locally grown produce, visiting the Farmers' Market at the Schlaffly Bottleworks on Wednesdays and the Greenmarket in the Central West End on Saturdays, thereby getting local lamb and chicken and eggs, beautiful tomatos, squash and eggplant and blackberries and peaches. Yumm. It was at the Greenmarket that I ate my first ambrosial fruit scone from La Dolce Via bakery. It was the lightest and fruitiest scone I have ever eaten. So now I think of excuses to meet people at La Dolce Via at Taylor and Arco where it turns out that the coffee is every bit as transformatively delicious as the fruit scones and the people who work there are nice and they have a child friendly area, which I like in a restaurant even though my days of coaxing toddlers to be good while Mommy eats are over.

The week at St Mark's started with the funeral of a long time member, who requested the St Louis Ragtimers to play at his service. He was over eighty but died of cancer only a couple of months after his diagnosis, which seemed way too soon. Tuesday, the Shawl Ministry had its first field trip. We brownbagged and went to Knitorious, the lovely, friendly knitting shop on Southwest at Clifton. We brought lunch, chatted, Melissa taught me how to do three needle cast off, Mo and I bought yarn for felting projects and a good time was had by all. On Thursday I went berserk and cleaned out the shelves in the office and the shelves in the closet where the office overflow goes. Vestry that night made plans for the fall: refinishing the badly damaged floor around the altar, sending a team to the Congregational Development School, scheduling a small rummage sale for late October, planning for Opening Day on September 11 and Trivia Night for October 15th. Today I met a new parishioner at another favorite coffee location Hartford Coffee on Hartford, just south of Arsenal and East of Grand. My top picks there are the sausage frittata and the lox and bagels. St Mark's is going to start getting and selling Hartford Coffee's fair trade grown and locally roasted coffee very soon. I hope.

I guess none of this sounds very strenuous but it is hot and humid and I am longing for vacation.