We're just back from a holiday trip to Philadelphia. As much as I miss it and, to a degree, consider it "home" our trips back make it ever more clear that my push earlier in the year to move back was misguided. We've not yet been gone two years and there are so many changes - changes that are organic to our friends and family who live there but are jarring to us as they appear to have happened out of the blue. I've come to understand that what I really want is to move back to four years ago, when J. was alive, the F. family wasn't in Tennessee, the S. family wasn't so far north, we weren't here yet, and before T. met and married "she cannot be named". This, I know, is not possible and so I am resolved this New Year to bloom where I am planted.


To that end, I have spent some time this week preparing canning jars for the upcoming canning season (strawberries are just five months away!). I haven't bothered to clean jars that were already empty since they'll have to be recleaned and sterilized anyway but I've checked the rims for chips and discarded any that aren't utterly smooth. I also took an inventory of lids and rings, since these are notoriously easy to lose track of - I know I've got another box of lids around somewhere dammit, but at least I've got a start. The next step is to empty filled jars with stuff that I will not use and is not suitable forgiving. The failed butterscotch sauce, for example, and the two remaining jars of applesauce that none of us will eat because it tastes like wet paper. (I can't remember what apples I used, but they were absolutely not saucing apples.)


I usually hesitate to rid myself of these failed experiments on the grounds that it would wasteful but I need to face the fact that it's even more wasteful to hang on to stuff that will not be used and that is taking up resources (jars, rings and shelf space) that could be used more productively elsewhere (not unlike using mental energy trying to regain a time in one's life that is over, no?). This, I feel, is a lesson that I can also apply to other areas of my life if I am able to master it in the canning cupboard.


The upshot of this exercise is that, hopefully, I will be able to jump right into canning when the time comes because my supplies will be ready and organized. No need to find the time to run for rings or lids because they are present and accounted for, no need to spring for yet more jars because the failed experiments have been dispatched and the jars readied.


If I can find my digital memory card (can we keep it's misplacement between us? no need to inform my husband, right?) I will post a photo. I've been neglecting to post photos here lately, but now that I have a groovy external storage device thingy (with a handy string with which I can wear it around my neck for maximum geekitude) it's a small matter to zip around to our various computers to prepare shots for blogging. Easier, actually, than getting any one computer to hold the various software needed thereby guaranteeing that such an arrangement will never happen. Now, if I can just get my hands on that memory card...