So Elizabeth challenged her readers to do two things over the holiday weekend: go outside and have some fun, and give someone something. I'm still working on the second part (I need to go to a yarn store, but that means getting gas and driving and finding my way around an unfamiliar part of town and I just haven't done it yet), but yesterday I went up the mountains with my dad and my little brother to pick out a truck full of rocks with flat surfaces so my dad can pave a walkway in his back yard. As you can imagine, I wasn't much help with picking up the rocks and carrying them to the truck, but I spotted some good ones, carried a few little ones, and stood around taking pictures.
The pictures are really the exciting part. We drove several miles up an old logging road to a spot where a rock slide came down almost to the road. There are quite a few slides on top of these mountains; whether they're from clear-cut logging or occur naturally I'm not sure, but they're all over the place, even in spots where the old clear-cuts have grown in over twenty-five years or so. The rocks here are mostly granite, with some kind of shale in spots, and there is at least one gravel quarry across the mountain from where we were.
Anyway, the view from the rock slide was really great. There were no trees in the way, so we could see down into the valley for miles. It was freezing, and for a while we were inside a cloud, but these pictures are worth it.
When we got home, we went over to a neighbor's yard and picked plums off their plum tree, and today we're canning and drying peaches and plums. So maybe, if helping with a project counts as a gift, I've got that covered too.
Posts
3 comments:
I think that helping out on a project is a terrific gift, the best one possible. And you took pictures and shared some with us! If you are looking for a vote, I'm voting that you fulfilled the challenge both in going out and in giving something.
Those are lovely pictures, btw. Absolutely breath-taking.
Wow, great pictures and I am very much in envy, I love the lure of old logging roads, they are just so, "could be going anywhere" full of that 'road less travelled thing.'
I would like to learn how to can things - is it hard? I don't actually WANT to can a bunch of things but since everyone else knows how to do it I think I should know too, right? I hope the canning goes well.
I'm glad y'all like the pictures, although I have to say its really not hard to take great pictures when the landscape is so beautiful, so I can't take much credit for it!
As for canning, my knowledge of it is pretty limited. As far as I know, the way canning works is I slice up and peel the fruit, fill up the glass jars, and then line them up by the stove so my mother can do the rest. I think it has something to with boiling them so the bacteria etc are killed and then using the expansion of the jars' contents due to heat (and then the contraction due to cooling) to seal the jars. But I couldn't tell you how to actually do it.
What is a lot easier is drying fruit. You just buy a food dehydrator, slice up the fruit, put it on trays and then pop it into the machine. Much easier, and I prefer dried fruit to canned fruit anyway.
Post a Comment