Sunday, August 14, 2016

GARDEN: Reaping the harvest

A friend of ours spent the sweltering Saturday afternoon "putting up" a half-bushel of peaches in her kitchen; fortunately she had the air conditioning in her old stone house set to "Arctic" level. We stopped by just as she had removed the glass jars from the vat of boiling water, and as the jars cooled on the counter we heard the lids making popping sounds to show they had sealed properly.
The peach halves were beautifully arranged in the jars, one nestled on top of the other, maximizing the number in each jar. She also made a dozen or so pots of peach jam.
This friend is an avid and talented gardener and was especially proud of a huge tomato she'd picked the day before: it weighed in at two pounds, and didn't break the stalk only because the plant was well staked up. As we left, she donned her straw gardening hat and went out to harvest some eggplants to make ratatouille for supper.

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