In the Presents
Although my birthday isn’t until
Monday, I’ve already got my presents. Why wait till the last
moment? I may be out and about on Sunday and/or Monday anyway.
I decided to attempt canning this year
so I obtained one of the big kettles for a hot water bath. I’ve
never tried canning before but I have fruit coming so I might as well
give it a try. Plenty of jars here – I tend not to throw things out
– but I will have to go buy some lids.
What will I be preserving? Pears,
probably. There should be quite a few on my big old tree (the smaller
ones won’t bear for a couple years, I reckon) and I do not intend
to let them go to waste as in the past, when I simply didn’t have
the time (being busy as a caregiver). Pear sauce, probably — that
should be simple and since I use a lot of apple sauce in my baking
anyway, it should be something worth doing.
No peaches this year, though. I went
out and pruned and pinched off most of the fruit. Better to let the
trees’ energy go to growth for now. Next year, though, I should
have a load of peaches to deal with. Little seedling fruit, mostly,
but that’s perfectly good for preserving in one way or another.
As far as my berries go — I doubt
I’ll have more than a handful of blueberries this year. Maybe not
even that from the elderberries, which are slow to get a foothold.
The blackberries should be plentiful, however, and there are always
the wild ones too. But I would just freeze any of those I don’t
consume right away.
There will be plenty of mulberries,
too, but I’ll most likely leave those to the birds!
Later in the year, of course, I’ll be
seeing nuts. My one large pecan should produce well this year. The
smaller ones I’ve planted since moving here are far from bearing
yet. I may not last long enough to see them with nuts. But the
hazelnuts have taken hold pretty well – better than I actually
expected – and I might even have a small crop from them (though I
wanted them mostly as hedging material).
My other present to myself consisted of
ordering a copy of ‘Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society’ by
Amy Hill Hearth (www.amyhillhearth.com). It is a novel set in the
Naples FL in which I grew up, written by the wife (and successful
nonfiction author) of one of my high school classmates and friends.
I’m interested in seeing how many characters I ‘recognize!’
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