I'm baking some tarts from the cherries we picked in the orchard. A couple of the trees produce dozens of pounds of fruit and so I spend most of the summers harvesting and preserving as much as I can because fresh tastes better than canned, even if it's in a jar from six months ago, and free is better than overpriced, always. Plus it's a strange sort of cap-feather to display, as I always thought there was some sort of summer magic involved in watching my grandmother tie back her hair in a kerchief, tie her apron around her waist and light up her wood-fired stove to cycle through endless hot water bathed jars full of spiced carrots, pickles, applesauce, jam, tomatoes and anything else that she could keep.
And so now I do it too, though PJ and Ben are actually doing the heavy lifting while I direct and stir with one hand and supervise and plan. I'll never have enough jars or enough space. I worry that all of this work will be destroyed in the next heat dome, and therefore I've frozen a lot of the prepared fruit for later in the year, just in case. We kept enough out to snack on for this week and next and the tarts have been requested after the pies went so quickly and none of the growing vegetables will be ready for another month and a half and so this is the plan, to enjoy everything we can, until it's gone.
There are nine men absolutely hovering right now. It's great. Also my fingers finally stopped hurting, and I haven't been to the beach in a week.