fecund, slippery nature

So it's time to bottle last year's plum wine and to start this year's plym wine. I have picked about 20 gallons of plums, and there's been another couple gallons of nasty yicky rotten ones, and there's still a gallon or two on the tree but they are not going into the wine. The nicest ones I'm setting aside to take to the food bank or something, I have to call tomorrow and find out where.

I've been driving myself crazy trying to adapt the recipes I can find. This year I'm not diluting the plums at all because I want really rich wine. But every time I try to figure out what that means in terms of adding sugar I get hopelessly confused.

Meanwhile, I was all excited because I decided that the yellow dots on my milkweed plants were Monarch eggs. They're not. They're yellow milkweed aphids and I have to hose them off.

I borrowed Zac's dehydrator to dry about six pounds of the plums, and just as he says, I have to buy one of my own. I think I'll splurge and go for nine racks instead of five, I don't know. I also have to purchase a new screen thing for my juicer, not because I tried it with the plums (failure -- the squishy plum pulp jams the juicer, which is designed for apples and carrots), but because it's old.

When I pass by the Meyer lemon tree in the dark it smells really strong and sweet. Not as cloying as the Datura which has become so popular around here, but sweet-tart, like the fruit, only sweeter than the fruit.

What else? some sort of cucurbit volunteers all over the garden. The nice fellow says they're probably squash for maximum inconvenience, but I'm hoping they're cucumbers, and a small variety that will produce before it gets too dark. Too dark for my tastes already -- nighttime by eight-fifteen.

Notice? Not a word about writing. I've been doing the Band Camp Mommy thing, and picking plums and juicing apples. Tomorrow, though, I write.