Bits

This morning on the way out of the apartment, someone had put a giant plush duck doll in one of the lawn chairs. Dokey. I turned back to look and getting a frontal view saw a 16-ounce red plastic cup jammed in it's crotch, so I know it wasn't one of the neighbors. The duck is still there but without the codpiece, which is now upright on the table.

Today I found a penny in the parking lot. Then I found eight pennies next to the vacuum at the do-it-yourself car wash, as if someone threw them away. Inside the bay where the spray hoses are, there was a nickel on the ground. I made fourteen cents without even trying. Thank you, mostly people who throw away money.

Starlings are arriving on window ledges of the apartment building in search of spiders, of which there is a fat, abundant, segmented hairy leg crop this year. One young bird came close and pecked my window screen, his little brown head eye level with a bouquet of cats. Two of the cats looked back at me, seemingly worried, does the bird need rescuing? Kai is the mom cat you see on Cute Overload.com, washing the orphan bunny, parakeet, or rhinoceros calf. Tulip is also a mothering sort and will stay awake until two in the morning worrying about world hunger. The third cat, Princess Snowbell, declared dinner, murder, and chose a Cabernet. No one can get to the screen; I open windows from the top around here since we are up on the ninth floor.

The cherries are done, I have pitted eight quarts which are now in the freezer. Two years ago I ordered a cherry pitter that has a hopper and a plunger, after my older hand model that looked like a nutcracker broke its spring. That was the year I did thirty pounds of cherries by hand, but it was worth every splat. This newer edition screws to the counter, you load it up and start crucifying cherries; the plunger has an x-shaped blade to push out the pit, lifts the remaining cherry up over a plastic barrier, and you have a finished product with much less angst and no staying up till eleven to finish.

Take a look at women who do home canning and preserving, they usually have great complexions from the steam. My mom used to can tomatoes, peaches, and make chili sauce in mid-August with a hot water bath canner. You peel the tomatoes by dunking them in a pot of ever-boiling water. If you are putting up twenty quarts of tomatoes that's a heckuva lot of boiling water, and that's step two, after you have sterilized the glass mason jars in a boiling water bath first. You put the cut tomatoes into the jars with a spoon of salt and fasten the lids. Then you load them up into a gargantuan blue and spotty white tank of boiling water, throw on the lid and wait fifteen minutes. You go through all this folderol and still don't know if you made it. If the center of the lid doesn't pop down upon cooling, you have to open it, wipe down the lip of the jar, give it a fresh lid, and reprocess.

By this time you are dead tired and look like watery hell, but every last tomato ends up processed. The jars sit on the counter all lined up in red glassed bounty, you go get the husband to show him, he comes out with "Those look good, but what's for dinner?" and you would like to conk him one.

I don't really can anymore except for an occasional jar of applesauce, it makes no sense for me, but I do put up strawberries, blueberries and cherries. Nothing like a pie in mid-winter, or fruit mixed in with cereal, or the recipe for blueberry muffins with a not too sweet orange glaze. All the good news regarding antioxidants is nice, but not the impetus for storage. Maybe it's a residual hunter/gatherer instinct that makes me happy socking away wild leeks and fruits in season. I get a kick out of viewing the Home Canning display at the local county fair, where one of the goals is to demonstrate the makings of an entire meal with food you have canned. I have seen beef in glass jars and lived, but that's getting into a scary science involving pressure canners and your own cattle. You could wipe out a whole branch of relatives with one casserole.

It is night, and a wash of rain has cleared the air of humidity. The temperature has cooled, and breezes are slipping quietly over the windowsill. Sleep, when I will think of you. And pie.