Hearts and Flowers

After a relaxing stroll through the wintry woods down at our local conservation area (extras) I stopped en route home to buy groceries and, quelle surprise, the store was awash in flowers! 

Flowers everywhere! Aisles filled with flowers...and on huge island displays along with chocolates...and cute little stuffed animals, and big heart-shaped balloons! Like, OMG..it's Valentine's Day!  Of course it is....February 14... but my mind had been on other things this morning....I had forgotten.

Those flowers were ever so tempting to pick up and bring home, but I restrained myself; they were quite expensive - over-priced of course for the holiday, and I figured that they just might drop in price over the next couple of days, so I passed them by and headed for the groceries! 

Grocery shopping these days takes a bit longer than it used to as it involves much perusing of place-of-origin labels. Shopping now is an education in geography and international trade! Research is required to  find out from where we get each everyday item. At the grocery store? No more just grabbing the same old thing off the shelf. There are so many decisions now - which jar of pickles, which variety of apples, or which can of diced tomatoes is NOT imported from the USA and then ...what is an alternative? 

One thing I realized today was that the option of a green salad is looking pretty grim; every leaf of green and every packaged salad mix on the produce aisle was from the USA and it seems, confirmed by the manager of produce, that we have no alternatives at the moment. I am now going through recipe books looking for salads of any kind for which I can buy "not-imported- from-the-USA" ingredients!  

Life is getting so complicated and will get more so, once those tariffs are actually enforced.