The Fruits of Our Labor

I need to re-read Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and the intro and cantos I-V of Dante’s Inferno, his happy treatise on the special levels of hell for various kinds of sinners, for class this coming week. So what have I spent my Labor Day weekend doing? Well...

1. On Friday, Mom and I went shopping in the Big City. Ray and I are upgrading from a full-sized mattress to a king, which should comfortably hold two adults and two dogs, though I’m not sure life will be the same without the occasional paw to the kidney and dog-sprawl suffocation. Mom and I comparison shopped, met Ray to seal the mattress deal, then ran around town looking for chair cushions and Indian curries.

2. On Saturday morning, I spent an hour on the back porch, watching a spider the size of a .50-cent piece repair a hole in her web.

3. On Saturday afternoon, Ray and I picked wild plums until he had to leave for a gig. Then a couple of friends and I spent the rest of the day (and half the night) processing the plums and a few wild grapes we found into 44 jars of gorgeous jam. Mom brought us a crockpot full of dinner, and by the time the jam was done and we sat down to eat, we had scraped and scrubbed plum jam from every corner, surface, and crevice of the kitchen and ourselves.

My canning method – Step 1: Drink lots of coffee. Sit on the patio and chat. Step 2: Turn up the stereo, 70’s hits. Step 3: Discover after an hour or more of steaming, stewing and cranking, that the little food mills you counted on are no match for wild plums. Step 4: Run to town for $50 worth of heavy-duty food mills. Step 4: Process plums, finally. Step 5: Drink more coffee. Step 5: Load up canners, set timer. Step 6: Switch to red wine and head for the patio. Step 7: Remove jars to counter and squeal with delight each time a jar lid pops. Step 8: Clean up. Maybe.

4. On Sunday, Ray and I made a run to town for groceries and more canning supplies. Then he picked apples, and I picked cucumbers and dill. In the evening, we headed to the Big City again, this time for the wedding of two women, poets & friends from school. Since same-sex marriage is still not legal in SD, they had a commitment ceremony. It was beautiful and quite moving, with a UCC pastor officiating, vows they wrote themselves, attendants, prayers of community support, and journals on every reception table in which guests were invited to write haiku in celebration of the couple’s happiness. The bride wore a gorgeous white satin dress, and the other bride wore a lovely white suit. Everything was trimmed in rose pink and brown. There was music, dancing, family & friends, and a whole lotta love.

I know gay marriage is still a hot-button issue for many folks, but really, when I pick up a newspaper or watch more than 5 minutes of CNN, I KNOW with certainty that love is an increasingly rare and amazing gift, and we should be thrilled for anyone lucky enough to find it. Period.

5. Today, Monday, I spent the morning making Sweet Dill Medley, a concoction I dreamed up that includes cukes, white radishes, green onions, red pepper, pineapple, garlic and ginger, all pickled together in a sweet dill brine. Ray’s been processing apples all day—freezing slices for pies and canning applesauce. And I finished another knit Lyra hat (copied from Lyra’s hat in The Golden Compass), which Jada “volunteered” to model for pics.

I could find plenty more to do, but I guess I’ve put off my schoolwork about as long as I dare. Time to settle in with an iced coffee and the Inferno. And is there a special place in Hell for procrastinators? I can’t remember. I’ll look it up sometime…later.