I have promised myself that I will write a nice long post about a magic place that's very special to me, with lots of photos, but it will have to wait for a few days as I am rather busy at the moment, so this is just a quick update for now. I spent this morning giving a 30 minute talk about art to my littlest one's pre-primary class. They were so very good, and so very cute, and asked lots of wonderful questions...though one little boy was so very excited about the prospect of school swimming lessons this afternoon that he had to tell me about that, AND that he had new swimming goggles too! And we did get off track a bit at one point when I mentioned that the Green Man was a bit like a special forest fairy who looked after all the forest creatures...which led to rather a long discussion about the tooth fairy and methods of extracting teeth. But they were all so lovely, and told me my paintings were very nice. Then it was off to work...as in my new REAL job, wearing my graphic designer hat, which so far has turned out to be very low stress and so much like my old job that it feels like deja vu! Then home again this evening, to deal with this......!
I wish I could say that these are entirely organic, but I'm afraid after two years of trying organic methods of controlling Fruit Fly, and two years of seeing not only our entire crop of Apricots but also all our Nectarines turn to brown rotting mush, we gave up and used a spray. So these need a good wash before eating. But at least we know what they taste like now, and my oh my they are good!
They still have spots and blemishes, and we've lost a few to the dreaded fly, which makes my shudder to think what commercial growers use on their fruit trees.
So tonight was our first bottling night. I bought all these jars about 3 years ago in anticipation of our first crop...and this is the first chance I've had to use them...gosh, I've come over all CWA (that's Country Women's Association...the only cookbook I've ever come across that has a recipe for MOCK TRIPE, AND a cure for Scaly Leg in chickens all in the same book!)
This is the first 15 bottles. There will be lots more!
2 comments:
l love the story about talking to the young students... precious! And the apricots look scrumptious, of course, maybe even more so because the ground here is starting to feel hard and the ice took out of the birdbath the other day is still sitting on the earth.... winter. Happy canning!
Can you make marmalade with apricots? Or only oranges? Since it's your summer down under, you'll be thinking smoothies, no doubt. (An apricot smoothie made with almond milk. . .mmmmmm!) Wonder if you can make "apricot butter" like apple butter?
Oooh, you could make pies! My dad used to make lattice crust cherry and apple pies. He used the ziggly edge of the wheel that turned the beaters on an eggbeater to cut out the strips for the lattice top crust -- made it look like they were cut out with pinking shears -- very decorative.
Happy apricotting!
Oh, and it's 2.2C here. I've changed my Indian name to "Snuggles with Kitties."
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