More than a Salad

This is what I had for lunch today:

Yum.

It's just a salad. Just a bowl of lettuce, tomato, sauteed squash, pecans and feta cheese*.

Except it's not just that.

It's the lettuce that A. planted for me last month so that I would have more when our winter-planted lettuce bolted.

It's the tomatoes I started from seed in March, even though last year's tomatoes were kind of pathetic and I had no great hopes for this year's harvest.

It's the squash that volunteered in the middle of the tomato plants and I left in even though I was sure the fruits would be those unappealing orange pumpkins that I don't actually want to eat as winter squash. Except this year I discovered I could eat them as immature squash in place of zucchini.

It's consideration, and hope, and experimentation, and work. All of that in a bowl.

And it was delicious.

* I very, very rarely have feta, even though I love it, but my brother-in-law brought it with him when his family came to visit. I didn't ask him to; he just did. So we'll add luck and family to that bowl, too. Nothing special about the pecans, though. I just buy them in bulk online.