Canning Up The Summer

Today I stood in the kitchen all day long. Virtually all the steps on my pedometer today were counted between the sink and then stove. Its canning season! I got all inspired yesterday and packed all the kids up in the van and drove out of town to my favorite big farm stand and picked up four half bushel boxes of peaches, fresh off the trees in the orchard and then on an impulse nabbed two good sized boxes of tomatoes to boot. I haven't done any canning in at least two years....but I don't think I've canned tomatoes and peaches in longer than that. Bay Area weather is the best for canning.

It was warm today and with a boiling kettle going for blanching and another for syrup to hot pack the peaches it was pretty steamy....but it was nothing like the heat you have in the Midwest in August when you can all day. Its a blessed relief to feel the breeze through the slider and know that the temp is maxing out at 78 or so with extremely low humidity. I remember the way I would sweat right through my shirt and apron in my native climate on food preserving days. Its lovely to can here. The combination of personal satisfaction over the work, the ideal temperatures and the beauty of the gleaming jars in rows all full of produce is a pretty heady instigator. I was dreaming about adding beets, applesauce and dilly beans and maybe some canned corn to the stockpile. Doesn't that sound wonderful! I am part squirrel. I can't help it.

I was very pleased with how excited the boys were to help and how very directable and useful they all are now that they are a little older and there is no baby underfoot or strapped to my back. Everyone can help peel or sort of pack jars and they are all so proud of being capable and helping to make real food for the family. Ru even spiced and marinated the chicken for dinner for me so that I could keep working on the peaches!

We found four chrysalises for Anise Swallowtail butterflies on our street on the only wild fennel plant on the block....it was sticking weakly out of a chain link fence and leaning precariously down towards the sidewalk. We decided the cut it off and take all the chrysalises home and let them change in the more sheltered environment of our kitchen window. We have hatched out two of the four this week and released them into the garden, watching them fly off over our mammoth sunflower and the board fence and into the neighborhood sky. We are still waiting on the last two and hoping we are able to safely launch them all. So much fun to find a new caterpillar to raise and a new butterfly to hatch. I would expect that monarchs must be here too although I am not seeing them much this time of year. They were around a lot in the winter, in between the rains....a friend told me that there was a wintering cluster of monarchs on the palm trees at the golf course in our town this last winter and many years before. I have to remember to go look for them this year with the boys....apparently the gold course men are very kind about allowing adoring butterfly fans in to have a peek, even without a putter or a ball.



We've joined a co-op for the fall for homeschooling for the boys and I will be helping out as a teacher in the program too. We are going to give classical schooling a try and test our hands at Latin and history cycles and the learning of rhetorical method. I am most worried about teaching our kids to be big headed snobs who are no earthly use but most excited about the idea of them all learning tin whistle together, attending group field trips and giving speeches once a week in class. Classical Conversations will be a new adventure. I'm ready for a little more academic community here and a little more pushing strenuous goal setting too, as the boys get older it feels more important to me.

Birthday, Peaches and Planes in My Dreams

This coming weekend will be our first time as a household celebrating my sister, Lockbox' birthday together. We are planning in some serious shore time, a peaches and cream pie (recipe here!), sparklers, some read alouds, some late night chatting and some cozy mornings sleeping in. We are all still enjoying her presence so much. We'be set up some nice boundaries for personal space and responsibility which are preserving but I think our warm friendship is the most important factor. I have cool siblings. I feel lucky.
We havn't been peach picking in quantity yet. We got a small bag of white peaches from a farm but I aim to pick more like a bushel for canning, fruit leather and freezing for smoothies in the winter.
The garden is clipping along nicely with tomatoes ripening every day, our first cabbages ever and several sweet dinners of baby beets in our bellies. I am really hoping against hope that our sweet potato vines bear.
I have a mad yen for a free plane ticket. A good friend was having a baby shower in Colorado, my sister Foxy is nursing my beloved, tiny premature nephew along in Michigan and I also feel like I am kind of desperate for a small,  careless foray into vernal Vermont. Nobody has shown up with a magic ticket though so I might have to stick with dreamships for transport.
I painting the house madly!!! The trim is starting to look reliably white and glossy around the house. Feeling awesomely capable after charging the drill up myself for the purpose of home rescue.
Tomorrow I do laundry.

Peek In My Portfolio

It's been quite a while since I talked about my painting, but don't worry, that's not because I've quit! It's just because summer is insane and I forget to share. I am also having a little bit a lull right now because our painting group is on a kind of holiday for a few weeks but I fully expect to continue painting as soon as I get the chance. I thought I'd do a little bit of painting outside of our meetings while we were all adjourned but I am amazed to discover that I have done none. Zip. Ah well...I'm growing big juicy tomatoes and thinking fondly of my brushes.
Here's the latest stuff I've painted, right before our recent break.

Part of the Grand Teton Range, I forget which peak.

This painting and the next three I painted while were on our family vacation this summer out at Yellowstone. I took my brush roll, my paintbox and a small portable watercolor block and painted using a little water in a soda bottle with a cap, whenever the group (we were with a family reunion) had a moment of downtime. It worked beautifully and was really exhilerating, some of the first in-situ work I've done. Another great thing about it was that it forced me to work quickly. I tend to get really caught up in all the slow, picky details of paintings and sometimes overwork things as a result. I'd like to become more quick and suggestive. These paintings were step in that direction.

We stopped for a picnic lunch at this lake and I painted while everyone else finished eating after I was done.

This tree was outside my cabin window and I sat at a desk and painted it one morning while the sun got warm and bright.

This IS the cabin window. Really hard to paint the fog on the windows, the light in the drapes and the shape of the log walls.

This is right around the corner from our house, I stopped the car to look at these amazing tree full of red berries a couple of times before I realized that I needed to paint them.

The above painting was another realy fun experiment in "looseness" as an artist. I worked on all those houses and the stone wall and the angles and geometry and then I took my brush with that bulls-eye red paint and I splattered the berries on those trees! EEP! It was kind of scary and super fun and it just happened to work.

This is one of my really classic-style landscapes. This wonderful tree arches over the little harbor on the lake where my in-laws live.

This painting was really fun too, kind of classic and I really struggled to make it feel like it had depth instead of just feeling flat. I love the colors...that bang of orange on the kayak and all that grey-blue next to it with the sun hitting all those gold/greens at the top. This painting feels like a moment I want to be in.

I love how this painting turned out. The glass jars, 3D effect of all those rows and the peach slices floating inside the containers as well as the metallic lids were a huge challenge but also a major triumph.

 Just as I was starting the canned peaches painting above, and just finishing the apricots in a bucket, below, a fellow painter friend wandered past and casually noted that they were companion works. How funny is it that here I was, painting this golden fruit sequentially and I hadn't even noticed that they "went together." Interesting the themes that develop.

This frame is a sort of goldy-orange metal frame, sleek and simple to counter-balance the sort of country feel of the painting and help it stay more versitile while playing on the same color themes. Love that gold ring of matting he put around the painting.

And now a little framing report. I have a wonderful, creative, kind and very expensive framer. I love, love, love his work but I seriously need to start selling some stuff to afford suiting up many more of my pieces. I thought I'd show you how a few of my most recent paintings ended up looking when he'd had his turn with them.

This painting was framed in a deep shadow-box style frame, and would look great with a small light shining on it to make the sunset scene glow. The colors washed out funny here but you get a view of the thick, chunky frame.

Here's how the painting actually looks. Pretty cool, eh?

And then this last one, which is now actually hanging on the wall in my kitchen! Hooray! I was surprised but pleased when he framed it in a big thick white frame. It's a bit hard to see on the white wall but it is a lovely maybe inch and half to two inch thick edge, and the matting is a big thick white cut on an angle around the painting. He made a pretty small little floral watercolor that could have felt like an afterthough into a much more dramatic, weighty piece.

So, that's what I've got at the moment. I can't wait to update again soon. I hope I'll have all kinds of lovely things to share in two shakes. This whole "taking breaks" thing is getting to me.

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Packing Jars and Suitcases

I don't exactly recommend canning peaches and making a pie right before hurriedly packing your bags, on the day you're planning to leave for the weekend....but, then, there are certain things in life that we just do. I really feel like I must have homemade canned peaches in the midst of winter and as the rest of the month of August we'll either be hosting company or frantically packing and unpacking at our new house....it was now or never. So, we picked and they ripened and then of course they ripened slowly enough that they weren't ready until the day we were leaving for a weekend at the Jersey Shore. Urgh. What can't be cured must be endured, Ma Ingalls always said and truly, there's a fact. So, we canned and I made a pie and then we packed our heads off.....

Peeling blanched and scored peaches

Empty jars, waiting to be packed...

This is what Nib did to help.

And the big boys, packed jars for me.

The nice thing about being two is that nobody cares if you can peaches in your underwear.

Mmmm.....the "fruits of our labors"

And then I ran out of jars and there were leftovers that had to be used up....

So we put a  peach pie in the freezer for when we came home again.

The Shore was really lovely but, it was great to come home too. Back to our rows of shining jars and that freezer pie all ready for us. Such yummy proof of effort!

Peach Love

 We're off and running on a very busy week. Lots going on. Company for dinner, apricot jam to make, packing prep to do (ah, the ever-present), visitors to get ready for, friends to visit, a Bible study to lead (yipes!) and heaven knows what quantities of laundry. 

In amidst all of the business we keep stopping to eat another peach. We've been peach picking, see and all of three lugs of peaches are spread out in our kitchen, ripening slowly on our counter-top. We're waiting for that sensitive point when more peaches will be ripe than green or mushy brown. Its a special balancing act and to avoid the brown ones you have to eat a few as you go, lest they over ripen in the meantime, see? Such a delicious business. I do like peaches. They're my Papa's favorite and I sure think of him every single time I rub a velvet fruit between my cupped hands and then eat it leaning over the sink to drip the sunset juice down the drain. 

Next stop, peach canning!

The Garden

by Shel Silverstein

Ol' man Simon, planted a diamond,
Grew hisself a garden the likes of none.
Sprouts all growin', comin' up glowin',
Fruit of jewels all shinin' in the sun.
Colors of the rainbow,
See the sun and rain grow
Sapphires and rubies on ivory vines,
Grapes of jade, just
Ripenin' in the shade, just
Ready for the squeezin' into green jade wine.
Pure gold corn there,
Blowin' in the warm air,
Ol' crow nibblin' on the amethyst seeds.
In between the diamonds, ol' man Simon
Crawls about pullin' platinum weeds.
Pink pearl berries,
All you can carry,
Put 'em in a bushel and
Haul 'em into town.
Up in the tree there's
Opal nuts and gold pears –
Hurry quick, grab a stick
And shake some down.
Take a silver tater,
Emerald tomater,
Fresh plump coral melons,
Hangin' in reach.
Ol' man Simon,
Diggin' in his diamonds,
Stops and rests and dreams about
One... real... peach.

Last Jam

Happy Strawberry Season!

Today the boys  and I started smooshing and stirring and ladling out our annual batch of strawberry freezer jam. We picked berries together this past weekend and it has taken me until today to be able to finally get the pectin out and haul the boxes of half-pint jars out of the attic.

We've been busy because we've been working on pulling together bids and comps and forms and heaven knows what else in paperwork and last night it all culminated in our offer on a lovely three story colonial being accepted. We are really excited and I'm daydreaming pretty constantly about where I'll put the vegetable garden and the bee hives and which rugs will go in which rooms.

This berry jam will likely be the last big project I'll ever  do in our boiling hot, gray kitchen. I hope I'll be canning my August peaches in my new kitchen....looking out the window at the lilies in the backyard. I'll miss the sunshine in this space, all my plants crowded into our story corner under the solarium windows and the cool of the marble floor not to mention the marvelous way it hides all cooking spills and drips. But, we are moving on to greener pastures folks. Literally. There is a wide green lawn, front back and side of the house where boys will tumble happily, an apple tree of our own to love, a big one car garage where bikes can live and a beautiful sunroom where I'll paint and sew and make emerald with green growing things.

So, here's to jam! The last ruby product of our little condo. Grey eighties place, you have been a good home but, not our real one, we hope, hope, hope (pending inspections and mortgage stuff and appraisals and all manner of other processes) you will be a piece of our past by the end of July!