Daily Notes- September 28

The fruits of my day yesterday.  And the fruits of my garden (the grapes vines).  My dishcloths and clothing is dotted with pale blue grape stains.  A pretty blue.  Maybe I should have wiped out the juice containers with some cloth for sewing?

I was ONLY intending to make one batch of three pints.  Then....I said to myself--- I have all that juice made and strained etc--so I washed everything and started in on group two.  I had the canning kettle of boiling water going the entire time.  First to sterilize jars and then to do the 5 minute processing of the jelly.  The recipe states to use half pint jars.  I have some but where??? so that meant finding them washing them etc.  And, really, half pint jars are so tiny.  There was extra and I filled two of my washed and recycled Bonne Marie jelly jars with grape and tucked them into the fridge.  I can give those away to the five year old twins.  Or G will start with those.

I was very happy to get on with the final wash dry and put away of all the stuff.  It takes so many items to do canning.  And everything must be clean.  And hot.  The boiling water.  OMG.

The jelly itself is deep in color. Garnet comes to mind. Dense in flavor.  Sweet. Tart.  Very good stuff.

G wants to go pick the rest of the grapes still out there.  Wants me to make more jelly in case we never get grapes again or have a bad year or locusts or any other disaster. What do you think?  I'll abide by the consensus of my Readers.  My son is visiting at the end of next week- perhaps he will want to make grape jelly with me???  We often cook together while he is here.

I have a book to read-- I got it off a list-- Mary Alice Monroe- The Summer Guests.  I don't know the author and don't know if I want to read it.   Sounds like a bunch of rich people stuck in a house during a hurricane.  But then I had no idea what I was getting into with the other books either.  Time travel and robots.

I have in front of me-- just noticed it-- an index card (how I adore them) with Meditation Notes.  I went online to get suggestions.  1. Start the day slowly  2.Walking meditation (which is why I am going on the dog walk again)  3. Short breaks to just sit in the sunshine, look at clouds etc. Counting Blessings is number 4.  Gratitude for good people, good health (sort of), good things, good grape jelly.  5. Reading  6. Community (blog readers)  7. Celebration of Small Things like my little cloth components.

I also copied a quote "You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes unless you are too busy...then sit for an hour"