I'm still trying, and generally succeeding, to focus on the positives, what we are eating and enjoying rather than what has done poorly or just plain neutrally. We have more than enough produce, haven't bought vegetables at the grocery store in weeks and weeks. But still, taking a long hard look at everything on harvest days makes me cringe.
I guess it's just a lot to manage for two people with day jobs (although I feel weird using that word, which probably has the wrong connotations for our jobs). Besides the daily tasks of watering—or not, this month—and every-other-day harvest schedule, there's the monumental job of keeping the weeds down, monitoring the health of everything, and then the constant looking ahead, managing the jigsaw puzzle of what will fit where next. Like, summer hasn't even happened yet and we're already planning the fall and winter garden. Basically, every time I'm out there these days, I feel terribly behind. Also happy, so very happy. It's confusing.
On top of it all, thirty pounds of plums fell out of the sky and into the kitchen this week. Just like that, out of the blue. I conquered my fear of canning jam and even ventured into two-pans-of-jam-at-once territory, and dispensed plums to freezer, cobbler pan, friends, and pigs. The pigs like them just as much as we do.
There's still a couple of pounds of them ripening in bowls on the counter, but I feel mostly in control again. Although who knows, the same thing might happen again next week.
