Good morning, my friends. First things first - I got a bunch of lovely messages from people who were concerned I might have been involved in a massive train crash here in Greece. To clarify, I'm in Athens, 250 miles away from the site of the accident, so I'm perfectly fine. Thank you so much for thinking of me.

Sadly, 57 people lost their lives, at least 85 were injured, and ten remain missing. There's a lot of finger-pointing and blaming going on, and protests galore. The government seems intent on hanging the stationmaster out to dry. However, he wisely secreted away recordings of the event and got them to the press. The recordings appear to vindicate him and point to other causes. It's a real mess. If you're interested, you can read more about it here.

It's a tragic event. Most of the passengers were young people returning to university after a holiday weekend.

This week, I got myself better prepared for the weekly market near my house. I spent a whopping 13 bucks on a rolly cart after I made the mistake of offering a vendor 2 euros (about 2.13 USD) for a bag of potatoes. I have a LOT of potatoes now (potato-based recipes to come on The Frugalite this week!) I also purchased some very-cool-but-touristy-looking cotton shopping bags when I was out last week. (How could I possibly resist Medusa with sunglasses?) You don't get bags at stores here unless you buy them each time, so I just fold these down and keep them in my purse for purchases.

I wanted to get some salad-dressing-making supplies at the market this week. I couldn't find any local vinegar but I did get a bottle of freshly pressed olive oil that came in what looks like a plastic water bottle.

I also stopped at the booth of a honey vendor. He took great pride in his wide selection of honeys and I was initally just going to shut my eyes and pick one (my Greek reading skills aren't great). He insisted that I needed to taste several different kinds before picking and explained that each one came from a different bee habitat.

There were two with the most dramatic difference. One came from high in the mountains. It was a dark, heavy honey with a hint of pine or cypress - sort of a woody note. The other was light and delicate and flooded your senses. It came from the vendor's own hives that sit in a thyme field. I'd seen "thyme honey" listed on menus before and assumed that meant thyme-infused. It actually means that the honey was harvested from a field where the bees feast on thyme blossoms.

Each night, I work on Greek. I'm taking some online lessons on DuoLingo, and then I use my bullet journal to break down complicated things, like pronouns and verb conjugation. Using different colors and doodling the words with pronunciations and definitions really helps you to commit them to memory. I strongly recommend this technique for studying anything.

I've always been a doodler. I just didn't know it had a fancy name (bullet journaling) until about five years ago.

I hope you have a wonderful week ahead!

I'm happy to report that our friends at Seeds for Generations is back in business after the devastating fire and they're having an awesome sale to kick things off.

As you know, it's the most important season of the year, as folks are purchasing seeds and planning for their gardens. This also means it was especially tragic when Seeds for Generations - a family heirloom seed business - lost their seed shop. The fire destroyed most of their inventory and supplies, which means they are starting all over again. Please consider supporting their efforts to rebuild & teach even more people to grow food this year by ordering your seeds from them. They get orders out really fast and the quality of the seeds is just amazing.

They're starting off with a bang and having a Plan Your Garden Sale that you've gotta check out. Support family-owned small businesses and grab your seeds here.