Fall gives me very little time to myself, very little time to mull and ponder and very little time to do any sitting around. Fortunately or unfortunately, fall has swept in a bit early this year or maybe it’s just the extra-lateness of Labor Day that’s throwing me off. The temperatures plummeted as everything else exploded. I got a bushel of absolutely gorgeous plum tomatoes for sauce making from Latham’s on Long Island, my freezer was bursting with gallons upon gallons of berries (it figures that the year which decimated my garden by the end of July was the one to have a bumper crop of berries) and gosh darn it, I picked up a new hobby which perfectly corresponded with the new chilly nights (how did I ever get along with only one scarf before?).
This means I have been up to my ears in domestic projects. I successfully put up thirteen pints of tomato sauce, which caused far more duress this year than previously as apparently my vintage jars have decided to start exploding mid-water bath. There is nothing that sounds more like nails on a chalkboard to me than the sound of a mason jar exploding in a vat of boiling water… but it’s even worse. It’s the sound of hours of hard labor going completely down the tubes. Needless to say, much colorful language ensued in spite of the fact that my visiting mom was actually in earshot.
After a nice long skulking tirade about the sauce fiasco, I decided I was tired of using an old carpet runner to keep my chest freezer shut (yes, it was that full) and put up about twenty jars of blackberry jam. That was at least (mostly) stress free. They even set up properly, which was a relief after the issues I had with my strawberry jam in June which had finally managed to set sometime this week. Jams really shouldn’t take the better part of two months to set, but I’m glad these finally did.
I also had gotten a shipment of plants courtesy of Pat and Bill, so there was also an entire day out rearranging the front garden to fit in all of my new pretties while getting rid of some Home Depot sale table hostas the previous owners had practically covered our full sun front yard in. I think I managed to put a crack in the hickory handle of my shovel attempting to get one out that was nearly three feet across. Of course, I got distracted part way through when a detour to the back yard to plant some gorgeous perennial begonias happened and I ended up digging all of the potatoes out of the vegetable patch. The yukon golds and red bliss’ must’ve caught the blight bad, as I think I only got about six or eight of them total, but the “mistake” la rattes, bless their little tater hearts, performed beautifully again. The mistake was I never actually planted them. I must’ve missed some seed potatoes when I dug them out last year, and they nestled their way into interesting patches of the garden which ended up in 10+ pounds of fingerlings for me. With the late blight claiming half of my garden this year, I am not complaining in the slightest. I have learned my lesson – always order seed potatoes from Seed Savers Exchange because their stock will kick the local garden center’s stock’s tuckas.
…and I haven’t even started to get into the fact that I finished my first scarf and am two feet into the second (and much more complicated) one.
So today I need to just sit back, breathe and remind myself that I am not an awful human being for not yet getting to the drapes that need to be hemmed for the bedroom, or that wrap skirt, or those eggplants in the fridge that I really just need to hold out for a couple more days so I can make a few trays of parm for freezing for easy winter meals. It will be okay, life will go on and no one will hold it against me that I keep shoving a few projects back into the dark corners of my house and mind so I can attempt to barely manage to keep up with the bounty of the season. Oh, and don’t forget making a trip out west to go to the yarn warehouse of course… all of that hard work definitely deserves some kind of reward!
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