Winding Down

I’m about ready to wrap it up for this summer and head south with the pelicans and geese. It isn’t just that that the desert life we live in Tucson is calling me, but I’m also getting tired of canning and freezing food. Unlike the squirrels, who go on burying nuts until the nuts run out, I don’t have to preserve more food than we can consume even though the garden is still producing.

Tomatoes have been a disappointment this year for the first time since we’ve been gardening. These tomatoes look fine, but they have little taste. Instead of slicing them to serve as side dishes or as BLT entrees, I’ve been lightly stewing a quart or so – mostly Romas – at a time and freezing them for use in winter soups and sauces.

Finally, I’ve had enough of putting tomatoes away and, athough tomatoes were still coming on, Dennis pulled the plants and threw them in the compost pile. I’ve dusted my hands of tomatoes for this year. I may also be done with roasting and freezing sweet yellow, red, and pimento peppers. More are developing in the garden, but those we will eat fresh. They will keep in the fridge for at least two weeks.

All summer I’ve been on a binge of making jams and jellies, beginning with strawberry in late April. Dennis has helped with filling and sealing jars of gooseberry jam, seedless raspberry jam, red plum jam, wild plum jelly, and just yesterday, a second batch of jalapeño jelly.

Dennis says our basement pantry shelves are full, so it’s time to quit that, too. However, our sole jalapeño plant has produced enough to eat fresh, to make 10 half-pints of jelly. I also pickled a few jars of sliced peppers, but that’s enough. I’m finished with peppers, too.

Yes, I could go on canning and freezing, just as our squirrel population keeps busy bringing pecans from our neighbors’ grove to plant in our yard and garden. Let them, but for me, it's time to wrap it up for 2016, get outside, and enjoy the beauty of autumn. It’s time to wind down along with the year.

Copyright 2016 by Shirley Domer