Canning Moonshine

by Zest-pk

Yes, even though I haven’t posted for most of the summer, I’m still laboring while others are sleeping.

Tonight the kitchen is abuzz with activity.

A three-layered metal contraption called a steamer is percolating on the stove top.  The Swedish genuis who designed it created a method to split open the cells of fruit with heat, and siphon their juicy goodness.

I’ve beaten the wicked deer to the Concords this year. 5-gallon buckets of grapes line up next to the stove, awaiting their turn in the steamer.    I drain the boiling purple juice into big half-gallon jars and listen for the lids to “Ping”, indicating they’ve sealed. It takes about an hour for each batch.

Even though it’s 2 in the  morning when I finish,  I trek the stems and collapsed grape skins outside to the compost pile.  (Fruit flies…blah)

The air is crisp from the first chilly snap of the season. Leaves litter the ground. Orion has returned to the sky after his summer vacation. The faint light of a half-moon illuminates curlicues of steam ghosting off the pot of spent grapes I carry.

It’s a night to remember. Late nights are like that…when you think no one is awake, and you have the stars and quietness all to yourself.

Just as Dandelion wine evokes images of long sunny days, each jar of grape juice, will fill my cloud-ridden winter with crisp autumn nights and the waning moon of summer. I’m really canning moon shine.

When You’re Not in Kansas Anymore, Dorothy

A Great Photo by PixieSticks23

It’s the garden’s fault.

First it was the raspberries. Millions of them, dangling like red jewels in the bushes.

Then a heat wave rolled into the valley, and like a Smucker employee, I was picking, jellying, and making cordial for days until…. well…often until morning broke the nightsky.

Then came blueberries, blackberries, peas, and the blessings kept sprouting out of the ground along with a few epiphanies.

Last night I was under the shade tree in the back yard snapping green beans. The thought came to me that this wasn’t as much fun as it used to be and I wondered why.

I have little-girl memories of sitting under the big ol’ elm, and everyone snapping  beans, slapping an occasional mosquito, and sharing their day.  Of course, we didn’t have air-conditioning, so sitting outside, hoping for a breeze to stir the baked air, was a nightly ritual.  We also put fireflies in jars, flipped june-bugs on their backs and watched them spin, and waited for the shift-change in insect hunting go from starlings to bats.

Now, I was under the tree with only the yard cat for company. Everyone else was inside, in airconditioning, watching TV, or in front of a computer.

I realized that the only reason I was sitting under the tree in the twilight was because that was how I had always snapped green beans as I grew up.  I hadn’t thought it through. I guess I thought everyone would drift outside to see what I was doing…in the heat…in the semi-darkness.

I felt kind of stupid.

Life changes. At least the bats still come out.

God Loves to Paint

by WVS

Nuff said.

Hope in the Mist

Photo by ToniVC

We’ve had our first full days of real sunshine here in the Northwest. The thermometer actually pegged 85 today.

I disregarded my Daddy’s old advice to wait until the oak leaves were as big as a squirrel’s ears and I planted corn. Actually, I planted everything. I put in a big garden as a hedge against the economy.

While I’m writing this in the thin hours of the morning, a familiar whisper makes me pause and listen.

Rain.

My friend from the Osage Nation would call this steady patter a “female” rain. It’s comforting in its scent and sound.  I can recall many nights outdoors and drifting to sleep with the rhythm of raindrops tapping my tent.

I’m sure I can hear the seeds I just planted, awakening and stretching roots into the earth.

There’s something about  a gentle rain.

It’s what hope sounds like.

A Ripple in the Universe

Thanks to Rodrigo Favera

I’m not a Ouija type of gal. I knew in all of the pre-pubescent parties that it was really my friend, Cindy,  pushing the planchette to “Yes,” when I asked if Jonathan Bell liked me. As it turns out, he did like me for a week and sat next to me in art until Melinda Crutchins made big eyes and asked him to sit with her. So long Jon.

The scientific explanation of the Ouija  is that subconsciously we wish for something, and a covert program running in the background of our thoughts helps us push the planchette to the answer we want. Drat! I always thought it was Cindy…not me!!

And then at 12:47  last night I was writing an e-mail when a friend who is dying of cancer popped into my mind. At that moment, I typed into the e-mail how selfish I was to wish my friend wouldn’t leave us and how joyous her arrival in heaven would be—where everyday is Easter.

I wasn’t with my dad when he passed from this life. I was at work.  I thought I’d know though. I figured a fragrant, pine breeze would touch my face as he stopped to say good bye, or I’d feel the earth pause in its rotation. When someone leaves  such a huge hole in the fiber of the world, how can there not be a ripple in the universe with their passing?

My daddy, an outdoorsman—not the REI type, but the Lil Abner type—asked the hospice worker to turn him on his side so he could see out the screen door. He passed with the fading afternoon, and I didn’t know until I received a phone call.  I concluded that we humans weren’t tuned into the escalator of souls coming and going.  It would be too much for our fragile senses to be jolted with every loss.

However, when I got the phone call that my friend had died around 1 this morning, I wasn’t surprised.  Actually, I felt great relief and joy that she’d made it home.  “It’s interesting,” the caller said. ” I woke up about  one this morning thinking of her.”

Like I said, I’m not a Ouija-type of gal. I think  it’s our subconscious pushing, worrying, praying even as we sleep.  I believe that our passing from this realm makes no wave.  Any ripple in the universe, is caused by the Creator—coming to carry us home.

How To Welcome The Dawn

Most people do not consider dawn to be an attractive experience – unless they are still up.  ~Ellen Goodman

Long ago, watchmen stood on their towers constantly searching the grounds below for their enemies’ movements. They spent hours and hours, searching the darkness.
Maybe you too, have had a night in which you searched the darkness for answers.

Hang on!!  Hope comes with the morning. When the first ray of light blades the sky, every sentry who has spent the night waiting, finds hope.

If this night finds you next to a hospital bed…waiting.  OR

Staring out of a window into the blackness…hoping.

Read, sing, dance, make cookies, create a scrapbook, a video, a poem.

Write, clean, paint, organize. It’s the little steps that help you keep walking toward morning.

Hope comes with the dawn.

Most people do not consider dawn to be an attractive experience – unless they are still up.  ~Ellen Goodman