::: created :::

The sunbeams were so gorgeous yesterday that they filled me with a strange sense of nostalgia. It helped immensely that one of them made itself at home in my bedroom, that it chose to highlight something I had completed--washing and folding linens. From my desk, the basket of thrift-store embroidered napkins, cotton tablecloths and quilt-pieced aprons just about drove me to distraction. I loved the look of those freshly-laundered things, and all I had done was wash them and place them in a basket. I hadn't even created them, yet they filled me with a sense of accomplishment. That's no small feat these days.

So often, what the sun brings to light, or at least what I see, are my shortcomings. The smudges on the windows, the dust on the bookcase, the handprints on the walls. Is everyone's tendency toward seeing that which is undone? Why can I not focus on those things I've accomplished? Why can I not give thanks for the good things? Why can I not be at peace?

My daughters have been working on a care package for their brother who is going through discipleship training before leaving for Africa the first week of December. I haven't had the patience or taken the time to teach them needlecrafts. I was never interested in learning to sew, though my mother sewed wonderful things for me and for our home. I don't really recall that she ever tried to teach me; the only recollection I have of my experience with the old metal Singer was a duffle bag for Brownies and a broken needle which brought about my mother's wrath. Sweetheart in particular is so drawn towards needlecrafts of all kinds, whether it's sewing, knitting or anything else that involves needle and thread, and I feel guilty for not having the skills or even the interest to teach her.

Thankfully, my mother-in-law spent time showing her how to cross-stitch and that has sent Sweetheart's finger flying. She has even taken to teaching her little sister a few simple stitches.

A few years ago, a friend of mine was sharing how her eldest daughter grew up and left home before she realized that she'd never shared with her daughter her passion for preserving. She'd always been so caught up in the actual process that she 
never taught her daughter how to put up beans or make jam or can applesauce. Her daughter was now in college, living on the other side of the country, and the realization that she'd "failed" her left my friend weepy and grief-filled.

Shortly after the realization, her daughter called home to give a life update. After some chatting about this and that, the daughter shared offhandedly, "Oh, and guess what, Mom! There was a group of grandmothers who got together to can jelly, so guess what I learned to do!" My friend's shoulders lifted from the relief of that weight. Education never ends! Learning comes from everywhere! Teachers are all around us!

For today, I want to focus on our accomplishments. I want to wander through the day and dip our toes into our interests. I want to trust that my gaps will be filled, that should I forget or skip or run out of time to share some passion of mine with my children, that they'll find it along the way, if that's what they need.

For today, I want to see the beautiful things that the sunbeams illuminate, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential they might be.

::: oh, the lord's been good to me, and so i thank the lord :::

On Thursday morning, I stomped loudly into the girls' newly painted bedroom, stopped for a second to admire my work (again) and then hollered, "It's time to get up!"

And you know what? They did it.

Because the night before, I had threatened them with the gravest of punishments. I would attempt to wake them once. Just. Once. And if they failed to haul their fannies from their beds, I would let them sleep.

Harsh, huh?

Well, yeah, there's a little more to the story.

See, they'd been looking forward to meeting a new friend. We were going to spend the day making applesauce with Jill and her almost-ten-year-old daughter Miss-E, and we were to meet them at early-o'clock in the morning. And that required going to sleep instead of giggling. And that required serious threats. If they didn't tumble out of bed on my first attempt, they would sleep, and they would miss going to the orchard to meet with Jill and Miss-E.

So when I hollered, they responded. The Baby hopped up like a Pop Tart out of a toaster, and I only had to tell her to change clothes twice, given that it was 33 degrees and she was wearing shorts and sandals.

The drive was gorgeous, with a heavy fog filling all of the nooks and crannies of this sleepy 8,000 horse town.

It was delightful to spend the day with Jill, sharing lifestories like we were long-lost sisters, listening to the contented silence of little girls engrossed in Polly Pocket play. It was such a different and pleasant experience to spend the day in the kitchen with another woman, one who was competent and self-motivated, who was not shy to dive in and do what needed done. It was forever surprising to turn from a task only to turn back and see Jill finishing it, having picked up where I left off. When it came time for us to kick it into high gear so I could get to the evening's parent/teacher conference, I was sorry that the day was ending. I wish I could have someone like Jill around to keep me company in the kitchen every day.

We stopped long enough to harvest some basil, which Jill vigilantly plucked, washed, spun and stuffed into freezer bags and to enjoy a lunch of romaine salad, fettuccine with Alfredo sauce and fresh-pressed cider from the orchard.

When all was said and done, we had thirty-tree and a half quarts of cortland/grimes golden applesauce standing proudly on the wooden butcher block. When each one popped, Jill would say, "thank you!", a trick she'd passed on from the generation before her to her own children.

You know how they say that chopping wood warms you twice? Well, the same can be said for canning with a friend; first from the steaming heat of the water-bath canner, and the second time when you enjoy that yummy food and remember the day you shared with your canning buddy.

On Earth As It Is In Heaven

I canned ten quarts of peaches today. Not because I am or want to be Martha Stewart. Not because I have anything against the peaches you buy in cans at the local Stuff*Mart (actually, The Baby declared that she likes those better, though she has yet to taste the home-canned goods). Not because I grew my own peaches, because I didn't--my peach tree died last year after finally producing a heavy crop of almost-ripe fruit which calcified before it was time to harvest, just before all of the leaves turned a crisp peach-tree-death brown and fell to the ground.

I canned ten quarts of peaches today because I like the way they look, floating around in that fragile yet sturdy transparent jar, fleshy and buoyant and preserved. I like the way they look, and I like that I like the way they look. Some people like beer. Some people like cigarettes. Some people like hunting. I like canning peaches, okay?

Yesterday, while I was picking up a few canning supplies at my local necessary evil Stuff*Mart, I dropped my hodgepodge of shopping bags onto the conveyor. The young man at the counter, always up for a bit of controversial yet lighthearted conversation, grabbed the bags with mock begrudgery and sneered, "Thanks for ruining my day."

"Ruining your day? Oh...because one of my bags is torn?"
"No," he huffed, "for using them at all."
"Well, just look at it this way; I'm helping you in the long run."
"Ha! If you really think you're powerful enough to save the planet by not using a few plastic bags..."
"A little corner of it, yes..."
"...then, Al Gore certainly has brainwashed you."
"I've never even spoken to Al Gore."

A further conversation ensued about Al Gore's electricity usage and the size of his carbon footprint.

But that's not what I was thinking about.

I was thinking about my shopping bags. I was thinking that I like them. Not because I'm an Al Gore fanatic. Not because I'm trying to save the entire world. Just because I like them. I like how useful they are. I like that my daughter used them to move to her college dorm. I like how I can throw them in the washing machine and they come out nice and clean. I like the red ones and the green ones that are stamped with the words, "Speak Softly and Carry a Bag of Books" that I bought at the Better World Books store in Goshen, Indiana, a business that collects and sells books to fund literacy initiatives worldwide, with more than two million new and used titles in stock, operating as a self-sustaining company that creates social, economic and environmental value for all our stakeholders. Better World offers free shipping to any location within the United States or 3.97 worldwide, and every order is shipped carbon neutral with offsets from Carbonfund.org. And while I like my shopping bags, I also like that I'm not contributing to the consumption of 500,000,000,000 (yes, that's BILLION) plastic bags per year. I don't like to see them floating around in the trees. You don't either. Even Wal*Mart doesn't like it. That's why they stopped producing those trademark blue smiley-face bags that could be easily identified on roadsides and dangling from trees everywhere and went with the more generic white bags, added trash cans to their parking lots, and introduced their own line of reusable shopping bags. Watching a sea turtle choke on that blue plastic smiley face is a PR nightmare.

I was thinking about how I stopped buying paper towels about a year ago, and how I pick up cloth napkins and hand towels from my favorite thrift store, and how the money I spend there goes to help provide basic human needs internationally while the store also does their part to help people recycle things that they might otherwise have thrown away. I was thinking about the fact that I love that thrift store so much that I drag my sorry butt out of bed three Friday mornings per month to volunteer at the cash register.

I was also thinking about the furniture in my house, how almost all of it, with some very minor exceptions, came from that thrift store, or from Freecycle, or from dumpster diving.

And I was thinking about the local farmers I support, buying produce and deliciously smoky maple syrup and vases of gladiolas from that wonderful little stand called Blessing Acres run by a hard-working Amish woman whose husband died of cancer two years ago.

I might even have had time to squeeze in a few thoughts about the lack of chemicals on my lawn, how I bend down to pop a dandelion or broadleaf plantain out of my lawn and either eat it or toss it to the sheep, or how I let the milkweed, thistle and blackberries grow to provide food for the monarchs, goldfinches and other birds. How I didn't till my garden this year, but instead heaped it with all kinds of manure, both animal and green, and spent a few more hours this summer hunched over yanking bits of purslane out of the soil and popping them into my mouth, just so I wouldn't chop up the worms I've been trying so hard to encourage to live in my garden.

Because you can have a lot of thoughts in those few seconds after someone says, "Thanks for ruining my day."

I guess I just figure that God gave me this amazing planet and all of the absolutely incredible creatures that inhabit it (yes, humans included) to enjoy and be a good steward of. The way I look at it, in relation to heaven, this big ball of dirt must be pretty small, and if I'm faithful with it, I might get something bigger some day. That'd be cool.

So, now, I probably won't save the whole planet with my canned peaches, or my cloth shopping bags, or my thrift store napkins, or the redworms in my garden. But really. What's it gonna hurt?

And besides, I *like* them.

I'll skip F for now. G is for...

...grape juice! Bo and I just canned 12 quarts of grape juice concentrate from two bushels of Concord grapes we picked yesterday. You can read more about it here.

C is for...

Canning!

It's harvest-time here in Ohio, so we're eating what we can, and what we can't, we can! Mostly we've been putting up tomatoes--whole for soups and also in ketchup and spaghetti sauce as well as "sundried" (or dehydrated) for pizzas--but we also did some applesauce and apple butter. Today, I taught Bard how to can tomatoes and she did a batch on her own. When the jar lids emitted that pleasing "POP!" I patted her back. She'd done good!

She also made fennel-lavender tea which was an absolutely gorgeous shade of purple. She added lemon to a glass of it, and it turned lemonade-pink! We determined that fennel is a natural PH indicator. What fun!

I've been putting things in the freezer, too. The excess basil has gone there, as well as batches of raspberries, blueberries, salsa, jalapenos and green peppers and peaches.

I hope to get some corn in the freezer soon and maybe some more stuff--onions and pizza sauce, maybe. Pears would be nice, too.

Are you canning this year?