All last week I’ve been in a cleaning frenzy. I’m not
usually a compulsive cleaner – in fact, I’m not a cleaner at all - but there’s
something about starting the year off with a clean house that is both
comforting and liberating. I cleaned things that hadn’t been cleaned for ages,
like the floor of the pantry, under the bed, and the work table in the
solarium. At school, I shredded old exams and repotted two of my three office
plants, and I deleted thousands of old e-mails in all of my accounts. I took
boxes of stuff to the local thrift store and threw out old odd-sized cardboard
boxes that I’d been saving like a card-carrying hoarder. Now it’s time to get
back to the blog.
Yesterday I picked the first of the second crop of brown
turkey figs. There are so many that I’m freezing most of them to go with the
earlier batch, and plan to make jam later this fall. The rains have come and
swollen the figs to gigantic proportions. The tree has grown so tall that we
can’t reach the fruit on the top branches even with a ladder, so the heavy,
split figs from the top branches plop down on the ground, explode, and make a
mess. I’ve never in my life done any canning, so jam-making will be a new
adventure.
Today we’re going with Michael’s family to harvest hazelnuts
from a farm up north, near Bellingham. We have wild hazelnut trees growing on
our property, but not a single nut survives the squirrels, who eat them while
they’re still green, or bury them and forget where they put them, creating more
trees in the spring. I have no idea how a nut farm stays squirrel-free, but
maybe I’ll find out.
The forest outside my window is still lush and green, but
here and there I see signs of autumn color starting to tint the trees. I was
just putting together a batch of Devil Scent discovery sets, and realized that
Dev Two is the perfect fall scent, spicy and smoky. I think I’ll wear it for
hazelnut hunting today. It’s strange how, after not smelling one of my perfumes
for a while, I revisit it with a new nose and realize how much I really enjoy
it.
All summer long I’ve been neglecting this blog, but I’m
going to try to get back into a routine of posting. Today is the first day of
the new effort!
[Today I took the lazy way out, so all images are from Wikimedia]
Posts
My family down in Louisanna make Fig Jam each year. It is great on hot homemade biscuits. I need to follow your example and do a serious Fall cleaning here. Starting each season with an orderly home is great. It just doesn't stay that way...LOL! Cardboard is never thrown out here, it is recycled into art or jewelry. Along with cereal boxes, newspapers, magazines...I love how each season also changes my nose towards different scents.
ReplyDeleteHazel, fig jam on biscuits sounds delicious! We have official cardboard recycling in the Seattle area, so I trust that it will continue its life somehow!
ReplyDelete