Grape Expectations (Almost) Fulfilled, and A Tomato Experiment

Outdoor Wednesday!

Let's go to the end of the driveway, and take a look at what passes for a vineyard
around here -- an ancient tangle of grapevines slumped between two old posts!


Thanks to Susan of A Southern Daydreamer for hosting Outdoor Wednesday.

I'm glad I've got grapes to share; I'm not yet ready to show that the first of the traitorous leaves are beginning to sever their relationships with their branches and litter the lawn.

I am not ready for Autumn, but if I could figure out how to stop the march of time, my girls would still be in footie pajamas, and I wouldn't be wondering why my hands look like they belong to someone else. Like my mother.

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The grape vines have lived at That Old House far longer than we have; even elderly neighbors remember them as having always been there, although there used to be a much larger arbor.

As I was leaving the house yesterday, I grabbed my camera and snapped this:

And this:

Our grape babies are all grown up, although we have a raisin in the making in this bunch.

Now I have to decide. . .
do I give the grapes to my neighbor so she can make her spectacularly delicious grape jam and give me a jar?

Or do I keep the grapes, and fumble through making my own jam, thereby risking disaster?

Shall I ask the bees?
(Aren't you supposed to ask bees the tough questions in life?)

Our bees do seem to know what they are doing. The Sedum has finally moved out of its
anemic-broccoli stage, and is rosy and glowing. The bees are in pig heaven:

They are all over the plants, and so busy that you can go right over and poke them,
and they pay you no attention at all. They are Bees With A Mission.

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Meanwhile, I have a Mission as well.

I mentioned that we brought home jillions of lovely ripe tomatoes
from our trip to the beach house for Labor Day Weekend.


The problem with jillions of lovely ripe tomatoes is that they won't sit around cooling their heels waiting for you to leisurely decide just how many celestial Tomato and Cheese Sandwiches (the noblest calling for a ripe tomato) two people can possibly consume.

Tomatoes have no patience, and if they are kept waiting they get ugly. Like, really ugly.

So I am trying something new: Homemade Sun-Dried Tomatoes, with my trusty wall oven playing the part of Old Sol. Check back with me on Friday to see how this particular experiment in housewifery worked out.

Igor and I are heading to the kitchen now,
to fire up the oven and begin our Science Fair project.

Igor likes to help in the kitchen, especially when the
Mad Scientist gets clumsy and drops something on the floor.

Have a lovely Wednesday. Our forecast holds rain for the next two days, so perhaps Igor (sorry, Dion!) and I will take a stroll while the Long Island tomatoes bask in the glow of 200-degree oven heat and shrivel up nicely. Like the autumn leaves, and the skin on my hands. Jergens, anyone? -- Cass