A Running Collection

We were waiting for everything to ripen. We waited for the green beans and the peas and the okra and cucumbers. Now we are shelling peas over soccer games, music, movies, and conversations. The children grab bowls and a chair and settle down. Five hands make it fun and fast and we've put up plenty of peas. Garden green beans are summer food and they are gone before they hit the freezer. We've tried to beat back the bores but they keep finding the cucumbers. They are very tasty, but we'd rather be pickling them instead of sharing them with bores. I think Amelia wishes Roald Dahl had created a character for a squash bore. Now we are waiting on little cucumbers to make their way back so we can pickle again. There is always plenty of okra to eat and freeze. We fry it and freeze it and do it all again. William loves chopping and George has hired a high school student to help with the work. William and Tyge are the okra chopping team. And the basil means fresh...

 Summer camp with Ema and Abuelo means piles of cousins and their blonde hair living in bathing suits by the water moving nonstop from fishing pole to kayak to canoe, to sand. Even mud baths are routine. They eat hotdogs on sticks over an open fire and sleep in the loft waiting for the light to play another game of Uno. Pancakes and stories with Abuelo. Hikes and tubing. Dirt and more dirt. Water and more water. They flop exhausted at the end all smiles already waiting for next year.

We tried bees last year and they swarmed and the queen bee, although we tried to rescue her, managed to either be kicked out by her troops or she died or she ran off. Who knows, but we lost them and got about one decent pint of honey. Our bee friend Cassia came over to look in the hive with us. We still are not perfectly sure what we are doing. Right away, Cassia found several heavy sheets. She handed them to me and said I could take the honey. Harvesting honey. All new to me. I know there are special machines that spin the honey out of the comb, but we don't have one. We didn't even know we had honey in the hives yet! So off to the kitchen with sheets dripping with honey. The only instructions I had were to scrape the combs off and that it is okay to crush the combs to get the honey out, but save the most beautiful ones. The children followed in hot pursuit ready to harvest honey. We set to work with strainers, potato mashers, spoons, more strainers, more bowls,...