Jammin'...

 A few years back I was making use of the bounty of blackberries here, making jam.

Wanting to try something different, I started looking around the garden for a companion to those luscious black beauties...

And there...right under my nose...

Yup...lavender.

And so was born my locally famous blackberry lavender jam.

Yesterday it was off to Regina's kitchen to do some jammin'...

She's one of my biggest fans of the jam and I decided to show her how its done...

Canning supplies all packed up...

Jars warming in the oven...

Crush the berries slightly...

Bubble, bubble, cook, stir...

At this point I add about 3 or 4 stalks of lavender flowers. Don't worry about stalks or seeds or bits like that because I put them through a food mill before putting into jars...

And VOILA!

I like canning with someone else...sort of a traditional girl thing to do isn't it?

Wish I had a giant kitchen to have 2 stoves going and a whole gaggle of people canning together...

Maybe I should ask for this one for Christmas...

A girl can dream can't she?!

Song for Friday...a true songwriter...

O.K I admit it...

I fell hard for this guy from the first time I heard his song'

'You can bring me flowers'... ("when I'm dead and gone...sit and think, drown and drink")

and then it was 'Winter birds'...

("It's the Widow now that owns that angry plow,

The spartan Mule and The Crippled Cow

The fallow field that will yield no more,

As the fox lay sleeping beneath her kitchen floor")

Then he won me over with

'Trouble'("every time I get back on my feet, she comes around and knocks me down again")

and the beautiful love song 'Empty'...

("Lay your blouse across the chair

let fall the flowers

from your hair

and kiss me

with that country mouth

so plain.")

His writing is poetry.

His music introspective.

Then out of nowhere he blindsides me with some country honk like 'Hey me, hey mama'.

("Papa's in the kitchen, mama's in the field

Murder in the hen house, mud flung high upon the wheels

Rooster in the dooryard just leaning on the horn

Wind so sweetly drifting through the ripening corn")

Needless to say, I was swooning like a school girl when I heard his voice again with his latest.

All giggling aside, he's a true songwriter.

Right up there with Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young,Riki Lee Jones, Greg Brown, Tom Waits and the likes...

Enjoy...happy weekend.

Fanning the flames
#3
He woke early and placed the
green chair facing the door...
Some say he could smell
 the wicked weather coming.

 

Oh honey, I really love you!

Remember these girls?

 Yes those beautiful, buzzing bees. They've been very hard at work.

Pollinating our Himalayan blackberries...

turning these...

Into these...

With the help of the sun and a bit of rain, they will be made into pies and jams...

But not only that. The other day, Bob the beekeeper brought us over a big tub of blackberry honey!!

I thought it deserved to be put into a lovely old jar...

and have it's portrait taken in the sun...

SSOOO photogenic, don't ya think?

Apparently those bees made over a TON of honey here...

Can you believe it? All those tiny, fuzzy, buzzy girls.

Creating a TON of honey!

So it's been a honeyfest around here...

honey on toast, honey in tea, honey on fruit and yogurt and yesterday I canned MORE peaches with lavender infused blackberry honey.

Oh! the insanity!

Fanning the flames.
#2:
Gently she touched the back of my hand.
The fragile, thin old skin of hers.
In a whisper above the clink of fine china and the murmur of guests
she said...
"what I really wanted to be was a cowgirl"

An added bit...

I'm inspired by so many things.

Things that take hold of me and give flight to ideas...sometimes they fly, sometimes they float.

Sometimes they never leave the ground.

But...

I am always inspired.

By poetry...

By visual art...

By food...

Recipes...

Music...

Gardens...

 Clouds...

Light and shadow...

And a million other things.

I often think of lines to begin a poem...or the title of a song...the name of a film... the opening line of a great novel...the title of a painting.

So here in a new feature, I will offer up these lines...

For you...

To beg, steal or borrow.

To take, create and make.

Do what you will with them.

Relate to them.

Make up a dream with them.

Most of all have fun. They are free for the taking. 

Embers to fan the flames.

#1:

'She carried in her pocket, a tin full of old moth wings.

Collected most delicately.

Knowing that, one week in August, the Alder groves were full of them.'

Is it worth it?

The season of canning has begun.

Putting food up.

I came home yesterday with 2 big boxes of gorgeous peaches to can.

Tom asks me..."Is it worth it?"

I say to him more than once during these times....

"Just wait until a cold, drizzly day in February...I will go downstairs and come up with a jar.

As the jar pops open, you will smell summer...

You'll taste August."

Of course it's worth it!!

Jars ready...

I think of my great grandmother and what it would have been like in her time...

Cooking on a big old wood stove like this one...

Some women were lucky enough to have a 'summer kitchen'. 

I imagine that produce was abundant with the amount of farmers in the area.

People grew much more of their own food in their backyards.

Canned food was not something you bought in the store. It was what you did in late summer.

Aside from all the other chores.

Without modern conveniences.

And so the tradition continues.

For me its not so much a necessity, although I prefer to know exactly what's in my jar of peaches, it's the satisfaction of seeing all those lovely jars, full, sealed and ready for storage in the basement.

So when it looks like this...

You know what's waiting for you...

Summer in a jar!