I’m still here, good friends … I’ve been staying up on most of your postings, but not writing a whole lot myself. Here’s a quick peek into what’s going on around here:
We are doing another summer play: “Robin Hood” — my guy is the Sheriff of Nottingham … my girl and I play characters in his merry band of thieves … I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. Opening night is July 10, so we have a LOT of work to do between now and then.
I am taking a canning class this evening through our college’s continuing education program. I’m very excited about this — I’ve wanted to learn to can vegetables for YEARS. I have the Ball Blue Book of Canning and a couple of other books on canning that I’m looking forward to finally using with confidence. I’ve always been leery of trying to do it on my own, as the idea of food poisoning is not all that appealing to me. My husband just brought in an armful of vegetables from his garden: tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers … the thought of my own canned tomatoes, salsa and spaghetti sauce is just delightful. I hope to be able to squeeze in the pickling class the CE program is offering on June 23. Will have to see if the schedule and budget allows.
The next few days will be extremely busy. My girl has her dance recital on Friday night, but in preparation for that she has technical rehearsal tomorrow night and dress rehearsal on Thursday night. Saturday brings a whole different party with the wedding of my cousin’s daughter, Kristee. This will be surreal, as Kristee was the flower girl in my own wedding a little more than 17 years ago. It’s so hard to believe that she is 23 and getting married herself! My girl and her cousin have small, but important roles to play in the festivities. They have beautiful long dresses to wear and they will be handing out the little birdseed bags at the end of the reception. My sweet husband built a beautiful kneeling bench fr the actual wedding ceremony, on which Kristee and her soon-to-be husband will kneel when receiving communion. I will try to take lots of photos for you.
Well, back to work – I have phone calls to make and paperwork to manage before going off to my class this evening. Have a wonderful day!
A Scribbler & A Shutterbug 
We shall now refer to your family as Robin and his hood We use to can veggies and fruits all the time. I grew up doing that. Man, I got sick of it. My mother’s rule was to have a quart of green beans for every week of the year, so we’d can 52 quarts every year. We also made everything you can possibly think of to make out of pears….pear preserves, pear butter, plain pears. A friend at church had a bunch of pear trees. When I was pretty young, I learned how to blanche tomatoes, and then can them. We’d also get several bushels of hill country peaches and can them. We froze corn on the cob, and canned creamed corn. My great-uncle down in Wharton County grew corn for a cannery, so he gave my grandmother some seeds from his hybrid corn. It grew stalks 11’2″ tall. It was sure fun to hide in those corn rows.And of course, we had all the fresh tomatoes we could eat in the summer, and more than we could give away. We also grew blackberries. Mmmm…fresh blackberry cobbler with homemade vanilla ice cream on top! In the winter, we’d go to my great-aunts in Wharton County, to pick up pecans off the ground. Our family grew a pecan orchard. A good crop could give the whole family enough pecans to stock the freezer for years. And we made pickles. My grandmother always liked making bread and butter pickles. They were not my favorite.
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