Tonight - Today

It's quiet tonight, Sunday night. My fingers are greasy from the chicken I ate for dinner. My hands are dry from the "mineral spirits" I used to clean up from staining-sealing my house until dark, after the late afternoon rain. I feel compelled now, as I usually do on Sunday night, to get some work done so as not to start Monday morning too far behind. But so far, instead, I am just starting this blog.

It was windy today, the first day of fall: blue sky, warm air and wind (!) and apples and pears were falling from the trees. I planned to finish the staining right away today, but instead spent the first part of the day harvesting and canning pears. It was an inevitable and cascading process.

I have the largest pear tree in town, and its pears have been building up on the ground all summer and were, by now, rotting there - hundreds of - perhaps a thousand - pears. It was helping the recent flourish of fruit flies and perhaps later would attract bears, and, mostly, what a shame for this grand old tree to do it's thing all year, do it so well this year, and for no one to really appreciate it. Like that, do it!

It took many hours to collect and sort, wash, peel, core, boil, and can these pears. You put them in water with crushed vitamin C to keep them from turning brown until you are ready to boil them (for about 5 minutes in water or light sugar-water syrup), and then use a boiling water canner to seal them in sterilized jars. I now have 5 quart-sized jars of pears.

Although it took about 3 hours to do 5 jars, I have 4 times that many pears ripening on an outdoor table to do and more than those again in the tree waiting to fall. It's not economical if you realize that you can buy a big can of pears in a big wholesale shopping warehouse, like Sam's Club, for like $5 or $10, but these pears are better and your really have no choice. They look beautiful, and I hope will be good in oatmeal or pancakes in the winter. I will store them in the root cellar.

When I was done, and ready to start staining, some friends dropped by with a tall ladder and picked a few too. Apparently, harvesting was in the air today.

Then I stained, until it rained.

My mom and her husband dropped by in the afternoon to bring back my dog from her play time out at their place "in the country" and we drank white wine while it rained and talked and joked about houses and dogs, gardens and woodstoves. They took home one of the quart jars of canned pears. My mom is also enthusiastic about locally grown and produced foods and crafts.

Today I also saw a hawk take a dove from my backyard. I saw it as it landed on the fence for a moment, the dying grey bird in its grasp, and fluffy grey and white feathers strewn all below. It looked back before taking off. There are birds that peck the fallen fruit and ants and flies are attracted to the wounds. Then a hawk, who lives out in the hills, will come and eat the birds. There is a lot going on on a quiet day like this.