The storm lasted for a long time, but in Portland the situation never got dire. This morning our backyard is full of twigs and small branches but nothing requiring a chainsaw and no concomitant damage. We were lucky because we got almost no rain, only wind, and thus no uprooted trees.

I spent the storm day baking bread, processing a bushel of kale for the freezer, and reading a Tessa Hadley novel. This will be a winter of greens: already I've got so much kale and chard in the freezer, with more to come. I'll have to become inventive: kale and sausage lasagna, chard and provolone stromboli, cream of kale soup, curried bluefish on chard . . . that's just off the top of my head; surely I can think of more.

Tomorrow I'll be hitting the road, heading to Monson for an overnight before my first high school class of the season. So today is the day for chores: yard cleanup, mushrooming, lettuce planting, chicken-stock and tomato-sauce simmering. Before the storm arrived, I yanked out my bean and cucumber plants and all of my sauce-tomato plants. It was no great loss: they were all on their last legs, and the wind would have flattened them. So now I have a half bushel of green tomatoes ripening in the dining room . . . a very small harvest compared to other years', but that's the story of this growing season. Too much rain. However, something is better than nothing.

On the bright side: mushrooms! We've had a summer of chanterelles, and this morning I have hopes of finding more maitakes under the oaks. If I can fill the freezer with choice wild mushrooms, that will compensate for other disappointments. And those maitakes are divine. I added them to chicken gravy for Friday-night's dinner, and then last night mixed the leftover gravy into risotto . . . maybe the best risotto I've ever made: wild mushrooms, fresh chicken stock, a Cubano pepper, baby red onion, chopped chicken breast, fresh parsley, parmesan. So good.

If I've done nothing else in my life, at least I've learned to cook, and learned to revel in what's at hand.