. Spinning .

Getting ready to bottle last year’s product.  Here, the overage (what doesn’t fit in the carboys) of peach, crabapple and grape.  The clarifier worked beautifully (the grape is in a frosted bottle) and made the wine sparkling bright.

Being on a clear liquid diet, I sort of thought this might be the right time to do the wine..

Then there’s the carboys,grape on the right and the harvest in front; the crabapple behind it.

Right now I’m setting up the prep work by washing the bottles and making sure I have enough bottles and corks so that once I get going, nothing stops the bottling process.

Then, I relax before the next harvest is ready to pick.

Bummer. The first year I’ve got tomatoes–the big ones–early, the plants have contracted fusarium wilt from the soil.  The yellow squash are getting eaten off at the bud now that the plants have finally grown, and some of the cucumber and butternut squash are dying off as well.  All this, in a practically weed-free, weekly fed environment.  I think the garden soil is tired after eighteen years and this autumn is the time to move it elsewhere.

On the good side, the dill is full and feathery and ready to be pulled and dried.  The pepper plants have caught up to the peppers and we’ve got bell, thai, jalapenos and habaneros almost ready (forgive the lack of the tilde or whatever it is I need).  The flowers are doing okay, and soon I should be able to pick some bouquets to cheer me up.

On the super duper good side, the grapes are so heavy for harvest that I could open up a winery this year.  No peaches 🙁 but the crabapples, between our tree and Gus’, should produce at least 10 gallons of wine if I don’t make jelly or crabapple sauce. 

And, there’re loads of pears.

I do not know why they are, in this day of high medical and insurance costs not to mention GenX and their projeny bitterly complaining about how we’re going to use up all ‘their’ social security, sending us all through ‘preventive care’ tests to try to extend our lives.  We need to die out and the sooner the better.

The main reason is not the above, but rather to allow to fade into myth the memories of a better product–regardless of the cost.

Here’s a can of crabmeat that’s about the same size my mom would use to feed her family of five, only when you drained out the water, it was full, unlike this:

Hell, I remember when you opened a can of coffee and you could see the triple ringed indentation in the grounds–so don’t give me the “some settling of contents in shipment” b.s.

And here’s what blew my mind this morning: a coat rack that promised top quality construction that I purchased (3) from Target (manufacturer, Whitmor, Model “Supreme Garment Rack)
that I’ve gotten frustrated with assembling, found at one point that two of their rods were not able to be screwed into place, and tried one last time to at least get two out of three up.

Despite their claims for top quality stainless steel heavy duty material, and the cost of these at about $70 each, the jackasses who designed them have little stupid plastic parts holding the top and bottom racks in place–guess how long those lasted?

And yet I have three other racks I’ve had for thirty years that hold the heavy woolden coats and are in perfect shape.  They’re only a light gauge stainless, no where near the weight of these, yet because some engineer was smart enough to know that a chain’s only as strong as its weakest link and passed on using plastic, they’re fine.

See now, this is what the next generation doesn’t want to know; how to make things last the way generations prior to them managed somehow to do.

On yeah; and we knew how to fill a can of crabmeat or coffee.

My strength has always been in my belief in the power of negativity.  I know, I know, and yes there are times when it weighs you down, such as in recent interviews when my distant past as secretary to presidents and vice presidents of corporations makes me less than cheerful as I sit in judgment for a clerk-typist job.  Whatever makes them think, I wonder, that I was smarter at age eighteen than I am now? But then it came down to attitude and maybe mindless bubbly would have been more fulfilling of their needs somehow.

But that’s the instance when the less than confident approach can hurt me, and only in that way–when I let it show.  Negativity used positively works just the opposite; it prepares me by asking all the questions first, i.e., I’ll never be able to do this…unless I (fill in the blank with an idea or solution).

There’s also other good negativity.  Like in a biopsy report.