I really want to make some raspberry jam. And dill pickles. There's this farmstand we pass occasionally that has a huge sign out front advertising homegrown corn, raspberries, and other wonderful things. I should just be bathing in all the happy fresh food that abounds at this time of year, but I can't help feeling sad, too, that we have to hurry up and gorge ourselves on this feast now because it will be a distant memory in a few months. Well, five months. That sounds silly, I know, but I just want to spread the tasty goodness over the whole year. Maybe preserving some of it in jam jars is my way of doing that.
I've only made jam once before, when I was really little. My grandfather had a huge (as I remember it) garden, and one day we went and picked buckets and buckets of berries there. There were lots of bees buzzing around, but they were all so drunk on the high-summer abundance that no one got stung. Then we cooked up the jam and put it in the freezer and ate it all year long. It might have lasted longer than that, actually--I think we had it for quite a while. It was a different color than commercial jam, much redder, and it tasted different, too. I would say it was like the difference between fresh-squeezed orange juice and the O.J. you get in a carton, but my taste memory isn't that well-defined.
We don't have any berries growing in our garden, unfortunately (you only get the plots for a growing season, so it wouldn't be practical), but we went out to visit this weekend and it is growing things. We've got all kinds of tomatoes coming out, and the nasturtiums look ready to bloom. The sunflowers are almost as tall as me. It's a relief because the only things we were producing for a while there were basil and weeds. We thought we might get kicked out for having such a messy plot. But Stephen went all-out this weekend and weeded the whole thing in the space of a couple of hours. He found all kinds of interesting things in there--some really pretty wildflowers, and a couple of rogue tomatillo plants producing fruit. We transplanted the latter into a nice row so they look intentional.
I can't take any credit for the effort because I mostly sat in the shade and watched. What can I say, weeding just isn't my thing. But I did make a couple of trips to the grocery store down the road for snacks and a bucket to hold the weeds. And guess what else I got at the grocery store? The new Harry Potter book! I couldn't believe it--I was waiting in the check-out line, and there was a copy of the book, leaned up against the register. At first I thought it might be the cashier's (like, he brought it to read on break and left it out as a conversation piece), but when I found out it was on sale, I snapped it right up.
I always think it's more fun to read the book along with someone else so you can discuss plot twists together, dissect characters, develop theories, etc. But (incredibly) I don't know anyone else who is right in the middle of the book at the moment, so I asked Stephen to be my reading partner. To make sure we're in the same place (and, frankly, because I like reading aloud), we're reading it aloud bit by bit. Well, not bit by bit--we've had it for two days and we're already 200 pages in. But I think that's a pretty reasonable pace considering the frenzied way in which true Potter devotees tend to devour the books.
I feel like people are probably going to have some questions for J.K. Rowling when they finish this one. (Maybe not, though--I've heard that she ties up all the loose ends really well. But surely people will have SOME questions about her motivation for doing certain things, etc.) But it's not like interviewers can say "How did you decide to have so-and-so die?" right now, since that would spoil it for anyone who hasn't finished up yet. Is there a set amount of time during which people can reasonably expect not to have to dodge spoilers on, say, Oprah or the evening news? A few months? A year? Until the movie comes out?
Speaking of J. K. Rowling, did you know that she started going by her initials because the publisher thought it would hurt her sales among the young male demographic if the author was obviously female? And that she didn't HAVE a middle name, so she took her grandmother's name for her middle initial? At least, that's what Wikipedia tells me. So it must be true.
