Summer's Bounty

There's something special about cracking open a jar of summer's pears and having delicious fruit with your breakfast. Last summer, I lived just over the road from Middleton Park. It's the remainder of an old orchard and still has four or five pear trees bearing hundreds of fruit. They're small, but if you beat the birds you can get a good haul. We also did a mission to some trees at a Cashmere park, which have masses of big pears. All in all, we canned about 40 big jars of pears. Then Laura and Dave did another seven or eight of black boy peaches. Somewhat to my surprise, none of them smashed in the February quake, and we're just starting to munch our way through them now.

You probably know how to do preserves. Its easy as. We lost one jar this year (it had a crack in it and didn't seal). So I'll leave you with a pretty picture and some advice: when there's fruit everywhere, take it and bottle it. But, while its still shakey, leave the jars on the bottom shelf of the pantry.

- Nat