Four pounds of blackberries, all foraged from the roadsides within 200 yards of home, have just been combined with four pounds of sugar. Four pounds of sugar is a lot. But, an hour or so later, there were six jars of very nice jam ready to see us through the winter. Making jam may seem a terribly middle-class thing to do but it ain’t hard, y’know.
Ignoring the currently redundant mug and bowl, we have: sugar; syrup; lemons; and wine. The pancakes are on the way — after that, nothing else is required for a while.
Despite the propping up (an action which probably saved most of the remainder), half our plum tree has given up the ghost; the weight of the fruit was too much. So today I had a great many green plums to process. It was the fate of these ones to end up in a demijohn with sugar and vodka. Apparently, in a year, we’ll have slivovitz. Or, I’ll forget about them, stashed in the closet as they now are, and our descendants will rediscover them in forty years, playing host to entire new ecosystems.
Don’t worry, I have not become Scarface. Not yet, anyway. But I was making blackberry jam this afternoon, and quite successfully too as it turned out.
Being 42 