Picking

Things I pick well: husband, apricots, blackberries.

Picking, part I.
This day in history, eleven years ago, Jeff picked me. He surprised me with a ring and proposed! One of my favorite non-famous love quotes is from a book called Golden, a Rapunzel fairy tale rewrite by Cameron Dokey. I know I've shared it before, but it's worth sharing again:

That's what love is. A possibility that becomes a choice. A choice you keep making, over and over. Day after day. Year after year. Time after time.

That fit nicely with this post about picking. I pick him, he picks me--over and over, every day, every year, every silver hair, every single time. Choosing the same person every single day has taught me more than I ever could've imagined eleven years ago when I first chose him. I still have a lonnnng way to go in that refining journey, but it's nice to stop sometimes and admire the view along the way.

It's crazy to look back and see how few pictures we took "back then" at the beginning of digital cameras (11 years ago is not that long ago, but it's our current biggest number, so it counts. Plus, in technology years, it's practically ancient). Sometimes I look at all of the gorgeous, clear, perfectly-posed pictures of the engagements and weddings these days and think wistfully how wonderful it would be to have gorgeous photographic treasures of that special time of my life. But then I look again at the assortment of pictures I do have from eleven years ago, and it feels good to be eleven years older, [eleven years more advanced with my camera], and especially, eleven years into our love story. I love watching time pass! Is it strange that I love getting older? I even kind of like my streak of white hair! Looking back on clothing fashions and hairstyles that I used to love and seeing the passage of time that way gets more fun every year. Both the photos and the memories are treasures--everything I learned during past experiences, and everything the memories of those experiences have taught me since. So I have decided to embrace the fuzzy awkward first-gen digital photos of Our Beginning, keep learning from my experiences, and relish the forward march of the years.

 Some things never change: I still wear that skirt, and we still like looking at each other. Oh, and my sister still takes our pictures (although her photography skills have changed for the better in the past decade)

Picking, part II.

We picked apricots on Friday! Every year for the past five years or so, we have gone with Grampa Dan (Jeff's dad) to the neighbor down his street and picked apricots. Since we no longer live four houses down the road, we had to plan ahead and drive the 20 minutes in to Grandview for this year's 'cots. It was worth the drive. I brought Rose and Amber, my two willing companions, and we had a fun outing finding free fruit. We used a picking ladder for the first time ever this year, and it was so much fun standing with my head above the treetop, gathering warm, blushing, sun-ripened apricots by the handful. We filled two large buckets full of apricots in about half an hour. They were tender, tiny, and sweet sweet sweet. Yum, I love apricots.

 First we used a small regular ladder, but the good stuff was up higher, so we borrowed a picking ladder.

 Amber fearlessly scaled the 12 foot tall picking ladder without a backward glance, then was stranded up top like a kitten in a tree. She didn't cry, she just stood there, gripping the ladder and looking around, ignoring our encouragement to come back down. Grampa to the rescue!

Amby looked so tiny from my perch up top. 

 After a little persuasion, Rose climbed the big tall ladder and enjoyed the high up view for herself.

After her adventure atop the taller ladder, Amber stuck with the 5-foot ladder instead, and even managed to pick a few apricots. As usual, she rubbed her runny nose with dirty hands and coated her cheeks up to the eyebrows in dirt. 

I simply could not commit to getting the water bath canner out this week (I don't have a system figured out in our new house, new kitchen, plus marathon training takes the edge off my adventurousness), so I tried apricot freezer jam for the first time ever. It did not set or even come close to thickening, so I added more [expensive] pectin and tried again. It's slightly thicker than the original syrup, but still quite sloppy. Maybe I need to get a squeeze bottle for it, because I am not adding pectin a third time!  

The leftover 'cots after making 10 pints of jam. I still have three pints left from last year! I had to scale back on the jam production this year, since we have strawberry and apricot, plus apple butter to choose from. So we ate a bunch (Rose and I are the only ones who like apricots, picky picky family members), then I pitted as many as I could squeeze into a gallon sized Ziploc baggie. I froze the baggie for future possibilities, although in retrospect I should've frozen the apricots in smaller quantities, because now if I want some of those apricots, I'll have to thaw the whole entire gallon and figure out what to do with it! Abundance can be overwhelming!

Picking, part III.

The next day, (Saturday), Dan and Leslie met up with us at our house and we went around the corner to a pick-your-own, pay-by-honor-system blackberry place. I was still overwhelmed by my runny apricot jam and wasn't really in the mood to get more fruit (especially fruit that wasn't free), but the kids were enthusiastic, so I gave each of them a bucket and they went to work picking. I helped Amber for a while, then stepped back and let the kids do their thing. Amber mostly ate the blackberries, once she figured out that only the darkest ones were sweet (that discovery was fun to watch). Jay enjoyed equal amounts of picking and eating. Rose was more efficient than I expected, and she filled her bucket in next to no time! We ended up buying 7 pounds of blackberries. Fruit overload! I spent the afternoon looking up recipes for blackberries, and although I found plenty of ideas, they all involved a whole lot of work and cooking down fresh blackberries seemed like a waste (plus sifting out the seeds seemed like a messy load of work--do I sound so lazy or what? hah), so I didn't make anything.

Saturday evening, I pureed two cups of blackberries, added half a cup of sugar, and we had pancakes with the freshest, richest, YUMMIEST (in spite of the seeds) blackberry syrup of all time. We also used some of my un-set apricot jam as syrup too, and it was such a tasty fresh summery dinner. I actually like the flavor of the un-cooked apricot jam better than last year's cooked jam. As if I need another reason not to slave over sealing jars in the canner! We still had well over a gallon of blackberries left after that, but thankfully the whole family loves to snack them down and they have been disappearing faster than I expected them to. Ironic: the blackberry puree syrup I made is thicker than my cursed runny apricot jam! Hah! 

 There were two of these dancing air guys to keep animals out of the blackberries, and they were actually kind of alarming up close--flapping and snapping up and down with those big grins. Maybe I'm too jumpy for blackberry patches.

Overflowing counter! 

Costco Powercakes pancake mix with fresh blackberry and apricot syrups: summer night delight. IHOP has got nothing on this! 

I would never have believed it possible, but 90% of the blackberries were equal to or larger than the size of this year's apricots. 

Happy picking!

 Oh, Shenandoah...