. Spinning .

The basic story follows the flowering buds turning into fruit, maturing, ripening despite the conflicts of drought, drenching rain, bugs, squirrels and birds and coming due to harvest.  At this point, the pears, peaches, crabapples and grapes will be transformed into crabapple sauce, jelly, and lots and lots of wine. That, I suppose, is the character change, the transformation to a higher level. 

More conflicts: the narrative structure, though linear as above, begins to backtrack into backstory.  The 5-gallon carboys in which the wine will age is the last step before the bottling, and two of the glass vessels are still sitting with last year’s grape wine for lack of bottle corks.  So the old wine must be moved before the new, mere fruit cut up with sugar and yeast in plastic containers for the first fermenting can take its place. An online order is placed for corks and Montrachet yeast and acid blends from a wine supplier somewhere in the midwest since my local store has closed.

The crabapples (which I’d frankly hoped would rot while I was gone) and the pears (the same) are at the perfect point and some are boiled down for crabapple sauce and jelly.  The rest, along with the pears and a half dozen quince are cut and thrown together for the wine.  A quick trip to the grocery store for 60 lbs. of sugar amid the raised eyebrows of the cashier and the lady behind me in line.

Tomorrow will be peach-picking day, and perhaps the grapes as well.  All are washed, the peaches cut up and pitted, the grapes picked from their clusters and squished–that’s the part I love best.

Then the produce, tomatoes and two kinds of peppers, and onions and garlic and all the rest must be turned into salsa. 

I’twasn’t long enough, though I used my trait of directional dysfunction to go twenty-five miles out of my way and back again to add an hour to the trip.

Unpacking, I find twenty-three new books, all free, to stack upon the shelves.  Could have gotten fifty more if I wanted–you can’t believe the shelves in the basement at Jules’ and Nancy’s, much less the library.  I wanted to live there among the books.

Home, I find a windowsill of red tomatoes.  The peaches are near ready but they’re more easily merely left to turn into wine, just as will the grapes this year.  The tomatoes need to become salsa, since I’ve sweet and hot peppers ready and cilantro within a couple days.  Should’ve planted onions this year; I love when nearly all ingredients were raised up just outside my door.

Home also reveals one potted plant forgotten to be watered but that’s all right.  The man doesn’t know what left the pile of feathers near the feeder but believes it is what is left of a mourning dove so likely hawk or fox fed well one night.

Though I haven’t gotten all the stress and doubts out of my mind, haven’t made a plan as to where I go from here, and loved the time spent with these close, dear friends, it’s still good to be home.  And the man missed me I suppose, enough to write some sweet words in an e-mail.  Forgetting that until I managed to use another account to send out e-mail, I’d used Nancy’s.  She promised though never to let him know she knew he’d called me Dimples.   

Awesome thunderstorm over the lake last night, forced to run for cover in the house and close the doors and windows to keep dry.  This morning, up at two a.m. to toss and turn till six.  Coffee out on the deck just listening to the waves lap-lap the dock.  Two salamanders nuzzle near the shore.

Restlessness still at war with serenity.  Just as nature, I am conflicted.

Had to taste the water with my toes, standing like an old woman in the lake with salamanders swimming by and swirling ribbons of youth around me, melting layers of worry, taking decades gained in mere years away, washing grey with blonde green-eyed girlhood.

It is a newness that births from nature into spirit.  It is a baptism of desire.

Well here I am on Stinson Lake watching fish jump and hummingbirds fight each other off the feeders. I haven’t seen the beaver yet, the one who’s blazing new trails through the neighborhood to gather trees and build a dam to change the face of New Hampshire. Nor the swimming moose.

I find peace and quietude here, with two friends I’ve known for maybe thirty-five years. Jules is working from his office—a recliner, laptop, and shelf to hold his coffee—on a conference call. Nancy has gone back to a reading-in-bed-with-a-cup-of-tea status.

Me, I feel a story coming in to fluff the feathers of my mind and settle in the nest of nerves to grow.

The lady at the bank asked me, "Are you signing this of your own free will?" and I said yes.  She hesitated with her seal in hand when she looked up and saw my eyes were gleaming wet.  It is so final that with the way things are, I can’t go back at all.  It’s gone to me except in memory and that will have to do.

So on the way home I stopped and bought a bar of Hershey’s All Natural Extra Pure Dark Chocolate with Macadamia Nuts and Cranberries and I felt better as the soothing smooth near-blackness melted down my throat.  To coat my heart, I hope, as well.

And off I am up to New Hampshire staying for a night at my dear friend Nancy’s (and her husband, Jules’) new (one year already!) house in Amherst then up to their lakehouse in Rumney.  Maybe just for the weekend, maybe for a year or two.  It could be, if I pretend, my writing cabin in the woods.