Day 198 – In the Garden

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July 16, 2016 – After three weeks going flat-out and non-stop, without anything that resembled time for any weekend relaxation, today was a gift. It felt so good to not have to be “on”, to not have to spend eight hours speaking. To not have seventeen sets of eyes on me all day. That was nice.

I got up to feed the cat that was apparently wasting away and beside himself about it, but then I crawled back into bed and happily dozed off again for a few more hours before engaging in a day with absolutely no plans. I had a couple of pounds of apricots in the fridge waiting to be turned into something. While I will do a lot of flavour combinations with most fruit, I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to apricots, mostly. I make plain, old-fashioned apricot jam. Nothing in it but apricots, sugar, and a bit of lemon juice for acidity. That said, I did split the fruit and make some into a small batch of apricot rosemary jam, it’s so good when used to glaze a ham, and would be fabulous on a grilled ham and cheese sandwich.

I also had some rhubarb and strawberries macerating in sugar and turned that into some strawberry rhubarb sauce and canned that too.

I puttered in the garden a bit; the tomato plants are a bit out of control, so I did some pruning. Kirk was working on the irrigation system and as I wandered through the garden saw some opportunities for droplets-on-leaves photos. Our garden is heavily shaded, and that’s just fine by me. I have a natural affinity for shade, sun and I don’t get along well much of the time. Shade is where you find ferns, and I love ferns. There is something so cool, so quiet, so serene about ferns. They evoke feelings of peaceful forests, secret places.

And the maidenhair fern is my favourite. I love how, when you look closely at the leaves on the fern fronds, you clearly see the relationship between this fern and the ginko tree. There is a reason the ginko is also called the maidenhair tree.

116 Photos in 2016 – 31. Wet