The Livin' Isn't Easy

It’s summer time but the livin’ isn’t easy. It can be quite demanding, but rewarding. Today, for example, Dennis and I made jelly from a bucketful of crabapples. Even though I cheated by not removing the stems and blossom ends of the apples, two batches of jelly took several hours. I'll admit that a good part of that time I devoted to reading a book while crabapple juice slowly dripped through the jelly bag. That’s a step in jelly making that shouldn’t be rushed by squeezing the bag unless one doesn’t care about a beautiful, clear jelly. Jars of bright jelly lined up on the kitchen worktable are our reward. I got an extra reward because Dennis did the clean up.

Dennis was more productive than I while the juice was dripping. He dug the remainder of our potato crop and stashed it in baskets in the basement. The red ones are Norland and the yellow ones are Yukon Gold. We will eat he red ones first because they tend to sprout before the yellows.

I could move on to prepare green beans for freezing, or braid the onions and shallots, but one major task a day is enough for this septuagenarian. I’m going back to my book.

Copyright 2014 by Shirley Domer