Peeking into the rock

There are two kinds of blackberries (at least) growing along the Arroyo Seco Canyon trail (that sounds so heavy-duty and hiking-boots grand, doesn't it? But it's an asphalt path along the edge of a city park), One of them is ripe right now. So when I take the dogs down the trail I collect berries, usually getting a good handful each time. That's my fresh fruit -- I feel guilty bujying anything when I haven't finished off the pears and peaches I canned last summer (I did finish off the plums). This summer, I think I'm, drying more of the fruit if I get similar windfalls to last summer.

The sides of the trail are completely lined with these berries, and poison oak, and there's a patch of native honeysuckle. Native honeysuckle is smaller than the thug kind, and has a purplish flower that grows in clusters. It's lacking the heavy fragrance, but it has the sweet nectar: a smaller drop, to be sure. Also it doesn't have the thug growth habit: instead of sprawling all over and choking out everything in its path, it grows gracilely up through the underbrush and sends a few slender waving branches into the air.

I've always been immune to poison oak. When I was a little kid I was horrible about it. I would cart around the leaves and show them to people to harrass them. I didn't realize then that poison oak rash can be really serious for people. Then I also learned that immunity can sometimes go away without warning, so it became clear that it was not a good idea to test that. So I avoid poison oak like other people, except that I don't worry about it when I do. I don't want to find out the hard way that I'm nt immune any more, and I don't want to be spreading the oils anywhere where people might have to touch them.

So I'm pickign these berries and keeping an eye out for the poison oak, which is really lush and beautiful at this time of year, with big, tender leaves and goregous sprays of yellowish-green berries. And then I notice a soft touch at my elbow, which is uncovered because I wasn't thinking about how I'd be picking berries and should wear long sleeves to protect against the thorns. The soft touch is a big fat beuatiful tender poison oak leaf. I'm disappointed that I've failed to notice it before. All the way back up the trail my elbow itches, in that phantom way that your head itches when people are talking about lice.

That was yesterday. I don't have any rash today, though.

On another note, Emma still has a nasty black eye from getting head-butt by a big dog on Thursday. The hospital visit cost, with discount for paying up front, two and a half times as much as the one in Prague. And I'm not sure that the doctor's fee isn't separate . . .

It's Marvell season.

We've cleaned up the plums and apricots. The plum wine has gone from primary fermenter to secondary (that is, from a five-gallon plastic tub to a four-gallon glass carboy with an airlock). It's the color of raspberry sorbet, actually. In my kitchen right now are a large pot filled with windfall pippins: another large pot filled with fresh-froze blackberries from the good folks at Prevedelli Farm (about which more soon): and a really large bag filled with pears from some folks over on Chestnut Street who have been trying to give them away every day for a month (about which more soon). Tomorrow we are contracted to make low-sugar blackberry jam, canned pears in apple juice, pear leather, dried pear wafers, and apple-pear leftover juice jelly, one jar of which will have mint in it and one which will have rose geranium in it (like Grandma Emma used to make now and then).

So. Last year we ran out of jam. So the nice fellow wants to make sure we have every kind of jam we make this year. And for some reason we're making largeish batches of it. So the California Cooler (for those of us who haven't had to sit through this explanation before, it's a cupboard built into a lot of older California houses with ventilation to the outside. They're usually not big: ours isn't, it's about a foot wide, a foot deep, and starts at counter height and goes maybe four feet up. Make it four cubic feet, I guess. Anyway. They work on the principle that in a mild climate, air movement will keep staples cool enough for medium-term storage. I find it inconvenient to store stuff like flour in it, and I suspect it's not dry enough if you put anything really delicate, though I've had no trouble with it. We keep breakfast cereal on the bottom shelf and preserves all the way up. There's also three 24-oz. jars of dill pickles in there, and there will be, in a couple-few weeks, a very large number of jars of "chili sauce" which is an old, probably Midwestern, word for bumpy catsup, and also tomato chutney, both of which have become necessary staples in the house.

The Prevedelli farm: we got our strawberries at the Gizdich pick-yourself farm down at the southern end of Watsonville, sort of by Aromas. But when we called about blackberries we found out that they were done with all berries July 31st. I will tag this so we know next time. But we were undaunted and headed out to the Farmer's Market and asked the Prevedellis about bulk berries for jam and learned that we could get frozen "seconds" from them for $3.00 a pound. I guess what they do is when they're packing up berries for sale, they toss the squishy ones into a bucket and then put them up in bags in the freezer. What they do with these ordinarily is make jam. But they'd sell them to us. When we got down to their farm, which is way out in Corralitos at the north end of Watsonville, they were labelling the little cartons that sell in the grocery stores or the farmer's market. They seemed very nice. Years ago we bought apples and quinces from them a couple of times and it looked like grandma was doing the selling, and I now know that she was suffering from dementia -- in retrospect, that's what her struggling with the money was all about. I forgot to ask about quinces this time.

Then we drove around Corralitos, Freedom, and Pleasant Valley (not to be confused with Happy Valley) looking for a barn where the nice fellow used to buy fresh squeezed apple juice ("we have apples," I said, but not forcefully because our Pippins are a little tanniny when you juice them).

More about the pears:

So I walk down Chestnut street on my way home every day. There's a house which has been lifted up to make two stories where there were once one, and where the front yard is dominated by a plum tree and an angel's trumpet. For weeks now there has been a box or two of free fruit out front of their gate. Plums, and then pears. Yesterday I stopped to talk to an old friend who lives on Chestnut Street and is a relatively successful teacher (as opposed to me), and then I stopped at the free fruit house and thought: "dang, that thing with my friend's windfall peaches worked out so well, I think I'll do something with some of these free pears." Then I thought: "it's almost as much work to make a little as a lot, and these nice people keep offering their fruit to the neighborhood, why don't I make them an offer?" So I left them a note offering to dry and can some pears for them, and they called back and tonight I went over and showed them what I did with the peaches -- they have two small children, one of whom loved the peach leather -- and we agreed I would take their pears away and come back with a bunch of pear products. They thought there was something more they needed to do, but honestly, they already did their part.

They're nice young people: early thirties, I think, teachers, with the right books on their shelves (Rebel Girl, the biography of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, for example). And she's going to be working with another old friend who's a teacher, too.

Oh, those old friends who are teachers? I met the first-mentioned when we were doing the Early Childhood Education program at the community college, before we went to teacher school: and the second when we were both working at the freezer plant that is no longer there around the corner from where I now live, and were also both participating in the Neighborhood Coop (grocery buying club), and various political things. Also the first-mentioned friend's son went to school with Frank.

Who bought his ticket to Prague today. Priceline British Airways: it turned out that with Easy Jet, he couldn't get a guarantee on a return flight.

And he finished off the peach leather.