“Well, well” said Cliff Murray as Molly Whiteside distributed menus for breakfast at Mabel’s Grill the other morning, “things must be looking up. Mabel has new menus.”
    “Looks like she can afford them,” grumbled George Mackenzie. “My ham and eggs just went up 50 cents!”
    “Mabel’s had a tough time lately,” Molly said sympathetically. “First she got hurt by having the close and cut back because of COVID-19, then the prices of nearly every food went up.”
    “Well the cost of feeding my pigs went up too so don’t blame me if ham is more expensive,” said Dave Winston. “If you want to blame somebody, blame Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine and keeping so much of their grain trapped in so there was a world grain shortage.”
    “Great,” grumbled George, “Putin invades Ukraine so Ken at the print shop gets more money for printing Mabel’s new menus! And we get poorer paying for them!”
    “Oh stop your grumbling,” scolded Molly. “Looking at your belt sizes, I suspect you guys have a little time before you starve to death.”
    “I don’t go shopping with my wife anymore,” said Dave after Molly took their orders back to Mabel in the kitchen (the same orders as usual even if the guys did grumble about prices). “I try not to look at the cash-register slip when she gets home, either. I hate to see a grown man cry – especially if he’s me.”
    “I know,” said Cliff. “Seems like you couldn’t watch the news on TV for weeks there without there being a story about the higher cost of food or gas. Funny, they don’t talk nearly as loudly if the price falls.”
    “Or we don’t get rain for weeks for our hay and pasture,” said George.
    “Or if the price of feed for my hogs goes up it gets left off the news completely,” said Dave. “But if the cost of meat goes up five cents a pound it’s big news!”
    “And it’s always our fault,” grumbled Cliff. “I mean people know so little about growing foods these days that if they think the price of strawberries is too high in September, they blame Canadian farmers when the strawberries probably came from someplace like California or Mexico.”
    “Well I’ve tried to cut food costs for the kids by growing a bit of a garden,” said Molly as she delivered their meals. “They actually thought working in the garden was kind of fun, until about 10 minutes into the first hot day, when suddenly television got really attractive.”
    “My grandmother used to grow a huge garden,” said George. “She used to preserve jars and jars of pickles and peaches and strawberries. I mean she brought home about half as much from the store on a winter shopping trip as we do these days.”
    “Yeah, I said something like that to my wife when she came home from shopping after work the other day,” said Cliff. “She looked me straight in the eye and said I was welcome to grow a garden and blanche all the vegetables and put them in the freezer if I was so inclined but don’t expect her to work 12 hours at the hospital, then come home and act like a wife from 1952 who stayed at home all day!”
    “I’ll bet you found an excuse to be needed badly in the barn after that one,” chuckled Dave.
    “Oh well, it’ll be winter before we know it and all this talk about growing gardens will disappear,” said Molly, as she headed back to the kitchen.
    “And people in December will complain about the price of strawberries and kumquats and blame the prices on Canadians farmers like us,” sighed Cliff.
    Molly arrived back to clean the table as they left and glanced at the paltry tips besides the plates.
    “Aren’t you guys forgetting something?” she asked pointedly.
    “Sorry about that,” said Dave with a shrug, “but I only brought enough money for the old prices plus a tip. “
    “Wonderful!” grumbled Molly. “So now it’s up to waitresses to make up for inflation!◊