Labor Day weekend

The weekend's been full already. Friday we picked up Debbie ('Gabby') and took her Mom Jeanette home to Alabama. I'd enjoyed as much of her visit as I could stand. We ate dinner there at probably the worst Chinese buffet I ever ate at...but my in-laws thought it was a great place!

Drove home that same evening, so that was about 450+ miles between 2:30 PM and midnight. Got up early Saturday to go to the men's 'rally' at Morganton Baptist (where I'm pastor)--but only a very few guys showed up, except for the A-OK motorcycle club, who were coming in off their 10-day mission trip. It was good to hear what happened on the trip. I was scheduled to go with them, but didn't get to go after all, so I was a little jealous.

Matt/Tasha came up with their neighbor and her fiance, and Debbie decided it would be great fun to go with them tubing down the Toccoa. That was fine, but I'm pretty sore today. I'd rather canoe than tube...at least you can steer a canoe, and you're not sitting with your butt in cold water the whole way!

Church this morning, with a few more people than usual. The youth did a drama skit, which was pretty good. Hope we can keep up some good stuff out of this youth group. Then lunch at Mercier's apple house, which is always good...except for the shopping that takes place afterwards! It always costs me as much as a really good dinner, when you count in the other shopping for apples, candles, chocolate, fried pies, etc.

Just 'vegged out' this afternoon, without having to worry about going back to church tonight. It came a very unexpected heavy downpour during the afternoon, so it prevented us from mowing grass as we'd sort of half-heartedly planned to do. One more thing to get done tomorrow.

Deb plans for us to go down to Matt/Tasha's tomorrow, and go on to Sam's club in the afternoon, but I'd really rather just stay home, go by the Labor Day BBQ, and do some stuff around the house. Like my Dad used to say when we'd ask what we were going to do on Labor Day..."Labor," he'd always answer.

Grapes, fox grapes and muscadines

I think I mentioned in an earlier blog that we put out concord grape vines this last spring...I built a big arbor and everything for them to grow on. But they didn't grow very much. They made up for it by having loads of grapes on them.

They were supposed to be seedless, but they ended up being the seeded kind. Late this afternoon, I went to pick the last grapes off the vine. Today in the AJC (Atlanta Journal Constitution/aka Atlanta Urinal Constipation) they had an article in the food section about muscadines. For those who aren't familiar with that kind of grape, "it's a southern thing, you wouldn't understand."

My grandmother on my Dad's side, Momma Jones, used to have a big arbor beside her house on Royston Street in Gainesville, with a very large grape arbor that was covered in muscadine vines. The grapes are huge, and grow singly instead of in bunches like other grapes. They can be reddish, but mostly are kind of a greeny-golden color. They have a very strong "Welch's Grape Jelly" type of smell and flavor, and make great jelly. Momma Jones somehow was able to get the seeds out and leave the skins in to make grape jam, which was also really good. (In fact most things she cooked were really good-I still haven't found fig preserves as good as hers, and I've been looking about 45 years now.)

Anyway, that article about muscadines reminded me that my Mom had said that there were lots of fox grapes growing wild on the place where we live now. I was afraid I'd pulled down the main vine, since year before last I'd pulled down a very large fox grape vine to make a Christmas wreath. No worries! I found fox grapes were growing in several places around our property.

Fox grapes are about the size of regular grapes, but perfectly round instead of ovoid. They range in color from green through a reddish blush on one side to very red to almost black. As it got on toward dark, I must have picked up about 3 or 4 pints of fox grapes from the ground (those that had fallen from vines very high up in trees), out of a ditch (where they'd been washed by a recent heavy rain), and even from some vines--those that were within reach and weren't too surrounded by blackberry bushes.

So tonight I washed the grapes and started making grape jelly. It's really simple. You put a small amount of water in the pot with the grapes, boil them until the skins pop and they get mushy, and then squeeze the grapes through cloth to get juice. You mix sugar in equal volume with the juice, boil it until it "sheets" off a spoon, then put it in hot jars and seal it with mason lids (you have to process those in a water bath) or with hot wax poured over the jelly to seal it from contact with the air.

I didn't have the right kind of cloth, so I just processed the grapes through my manual food mill. This gives you sort of a cross between grape jelly and grape jam. I had put up two small jars of jelly a few days ago, and processed them with mason jar seals, etc. But I've filled up all the jars I have up here in the house (hope more are in the basement). So I was going to re-fill a jar formerly used for honey, and a highball glass that somehow ended up here in this teetotalling home.

Paraffin wax is used to seal jelly, so genius here decided to heat it up in the microwave...didn't realize that paraffin gets MUCH hotter than water. When I took the bowl out of the oven and set it on the countertop, the temperature differential started the glass bowl cracking...with it full of melted wax! What a mess!

Anyway, after I cleaned that up, I managed to rig up a double boiler to melt more wax, and finally got the jelly sealed in the highball glass, which I guess by definition is now a jelly glass. I didn't need the former honey jar, so I'm saving it for future misadventures.

If I remember, I'll try to report later on whether the jelly was worth all this hassle! It looks good, anyway...the fox grapes mixed with the concords cause it to be redder in color than the purple jelly I made a few days ago which had only concord grapes.

Monsoon season

Don't know quite why we've had so much rain lately. It's unusual in the mountains in August to have several days of solid rain in a row. Thundershowers, yes. But not what we've had lately.

It's gotten pretty soggy, and of course the grass loves it. I'm going to have a big job cutting the yards, the orchard, and the lower field when it dries out again.

In the meantime, I've been putting up some things...applesauce and apple butter, mostly, but I also put up some grape jelly from the grapevines we planted this past spring. It's really unusual to get a harvest the first year after transplant, but we'll take them.

I'm usually the one who does the freezing and canning. Guess it's my 'cosmic possum' mountaineer background.

One thing the rain has kept me from doing is working on my storage building/workshop. The rain always floods the basement to a degree, so things down there are getting way too damp. I think some books, etc. are probably ruined. Hope I can get the rest of the building completed before cold weather comes. It'll be great to have stuff stored nearby instead of at a commercial storage building (at least some of our stuff) and also to have a real workshop.

Over the last few days I've cleaned up my office, so it's less of a dump. Maybe I'll also get things cleaned under our carport, too. Right now there's a big stack of building materials waiting on me to finish the shed. But, it's monsoon season...when it's usually dry!

Hobbies

Most everyone has some kind of hobby. I have several, from reading to playing online word games to woodworking to gardening. Some 'hobbies' are more like second jobs--especially this time of year when I'm putting things up in jars. Today I processed 6 qts and 1 pt of applesauce and apple-pear sauce. I've got a crockpot full of apple butter simmering. And yesterday I froze about 6 or 7 pints of blueberries!
One hobby I used to have that's almost completely gone now is swimming. Don't really remember the last time I went swimming. I really should start back on that one, for the exercise's sake.
Today I did a little work on a hobby of mine that comes just once a year--TubaChristmas. I played tuba in high school, and later acquired a nice euphonium so I could quit borrowing one to accompany my kids when we went to the Atlanta location of TubaChristmas. Also we have gone to Chattanooga when they used to have an event, and to Harriman, TN, where we met Sande MacMorran of the University of Tennessee music department. We went several years in a row to Atlanta when they were inside the CNN building, but now that they have moved outside, it's just too cold and windy.
So last year I took the plunge and became a local coordinator for TubaChristmas. Our event is TubaChristmas Blue Ridge, our 2nd annual, and it will be Saturday, November 29th right in downtown Blue Ridge. (Yes, I know its the UGA/Tech game, but we'll be finished before the game really gets going!)
If you're interested in coming to this TubaChristmas, check out their website in the next few days...details of our event are supposed to be posted soon.

Finally joining my family

I'm finally getting around to joining my family in the wide world of blogging. Everyone with a computer in the Jones clan seems to have gotten 'on board' with a blog of his or her own. I don't have much to comment about today, except the title of my blog.
My wife Debbie recently acquired the nickname "Gabby" from a visiting speaker at our church. He just heard her name wrong, and referred to her as "Gabby" from the pulpit...of course the youth and resident 'kidders' at the church have not let her live it down, so she's just going with the flow now.
Must go now and get some late lunch and fix supper.