Drying Kiwi

With three days left in the year of 2011, I am trying to make use of the kiwi that I harvested in late November.  I purchased a food dehydrator online for the purpose of saving some of the kiwi.  Some experimentation had to take place and sure enough I had to pitch out the first batch.

The instructions did not say to pre treat the kiwi, but I did with "fruit fresh" and that may be why the first batch had such a tart taste.  Some days went by before I tried again.  This time I thought a strawberry flavor might be tasty.  I had some powdered strawberry jello on hand so I sprinkled that on the peeled slices of kiwi.  I put in three trays of the kiwi and one tray of sliced persimmon.  Both the persimmon and the strawberry  kiwi was pleasant to taste.  I did the moisture test on them and they passed.  The moisture test is simply to place the product in a glass jar and put the lid on.  Watch and see if it fogs up, if not then the proper amount of dryness  is correct.

My next part of the experiment was to try different flavors.  My daughter gave me some sugar free jello in lemon and raspberry.  I put in one tray of lemon flavor sliced kiwi, in about 1/8 inch slices.  One tray had the kiwi sprinkled with the raspberry jello powder.  One tray had the kiwi with Splenda sprinkled on them.  Part of this experiment was to add another fruit so I used two small bananas for the fourth tray.  I did not pretreat them with ascorbic powder and I learned that the color would have been lighter if I had, and perhaps the taste better.  But, all in all, I like the flavor of the raspberry and the kiwi with splenda best.  The lemon sugar free jello powder did not enhance the taste of the kiwi on that tray.

My daughter has hinted that she will be looking for boxes of persimmon on sale for me to dry.  I do think that the persimmon had the prettiest appearance and a very pleasant taste.  The nice thing about the dried fruit is that I can put it in the freezer chest and pull out for making trail mix all during the time that the kiwi vines are sleeping the winter away.

Drying Kiwi

Fellowship Around the Ginkgo

The simplist things in nature can be the most beautiful, and capture the attention of everyone who is fortunate enough to be able to view them.  I was priviliged to see the branches of the Ginkgo in their rich, yellow, fall color, in tall thin vases of water, sitting in the middle of the  tables in a long window lined room.

The room was the large fellowship hall at our small church.  I was walking in that direction with a bag containing hot, fragrant grilled chicken from KFC.  I had just met up with the speaker for the morning  service.   He was with his wife of many years, and no doubt memories were crowding through through their minds,  as he once  pastored this church, on many occasions over many years.  We chatted as we walked toward the  building.   He had his grandson on his mind as he would not be there for the service today, but the rest of his family would be.  The fellowship for the morning began with meeting them as we stepped from our cars, and it continued into the  building.

Before I opened the door I could faintly hear the various tones of voices on the other side.  Thus began the warm tone of the day.  As I stepped inside I said to the nearest people standing around a huge table, " I brought Dottie and Cliff with me".  The talking did not stop, but we were greeted warmly by the ones closest to the door.  We went our separate ways  as I found the hostesses for the dinner and handed over the bucket of chicken in the bag.  I made my way around the room greeting some friends who sat having coffee and snacks at the round tables all decorated with the autumn motif.  The vases on the tables dominated the scene with the rich yellow of the Ginkgo leaves still clinging to the dark brown branches, and dominating  the space with their beauty.  As an admirer of  the fan shaped leaf of this particular tree, I could not resist reaching over and gently touching one and examining  up close it's shape, color and unique vein arrangement.  No other leaf in nature has the parallel veins as does this Ginkgo biloba.  It is an Asiatic tree and well suited to withstand the pollution of our cities.

I have been drawn to the Ginkgo since I was a young girl.  I suppose I caught the fever from my mother.  She first pointed out the Ginkgo to me on a  trip to the local post office, in our small town, in eastern Kentucky.  When I first saw this tree it was as big as a full grown white oak, and dwarfed the building in front of it.  My mother once framed a leaf and the seeds from it, in a small green frame, along with information about it.

The presence of the Ginkfo  pops up in unexpected places.  There is one at the back of the school where I taught first graders for fifteen years.  Each fall I looked forward to seeing the rich yellow leaves, as I walked my children to their Gym class.  It was a young tree then but after twenty years it must be more than twice the size it was then.  They are a slow growing tree but well worth the wait.

I spotted a row of them planted on the main east/west  highway in our town.  Some one else appreciated this tree, as the decision was made to plant around six of them in front of a grocery store.  Perhaps this same city planner wanted to see them across town as a row of them is planted near the corner of two busy streets, Washington and Academy Streets near the town square.  Some days when I am caught waiting for a light to change I am parked beside this row of  Ginkgoes and have the pleasure of seeing them all green.  However they achieve their greatest beauty in the fall of the year.

Trees have always held a fascination for me.  In winter when no leaves can conceal the structure of  their many branches, they are best displayed against a cloudless sky.  The different, textured bark of the hardwoods and the peeling bark of  the Crape Myrtles,  are close to me here where I live.  My woods is full of the beauty of the bark of so many of them, not to mention the variety of leaf shapes.  The Mulberry always amuses me with it's three different shape leaves .  The Sassafras also has these particular leaf patterns.  Another aspect of the mighty tree is how it nourishes us in many ways with it's fruit.  Perhaps the greatest gift of all the trees is the oxygen it gives back to us while taking away the air we have already used.  We could not,  literally, exist without them.  Nor could we exist without the fellowship of our fellow human beings.  Both are treasures to hold onto  and be sustained by, in order to live in harmony and enjoy a satisfactory life.  If you are out and about and see a tree with rich, yellow foliage gracing its branches, take a closer look, it just may be this interesting Ginkgo, displaying its fall wardrobe.

Harvesting the Kiwi

Our local weatherman on television advised us that on early Friday morning we would have a freeze in our area of the state.  So on Thursday morning I donned my warmest outdoor work clothes and went outdoors to prepare for the freeze.  Some chores close to my house had priority but then I gathered all of the giant market baskets that I had stored in the Cedar House, got in my golf cart and headed up to the Kiwi vines.  Of my three female vines I only had two to bear fruit this year.  I fully expect that next year the other one will be as productive as the two I picked from on Thursday.

 

It was pleasant enough to be outdoors and working among the vines.  I wore work gloves as reaching through the many vines can cause some scratches on your hands.  After about two hours of picking I had the four market baskets filled to the  top.  Since it was near lunch time, and a good break time, I went up to the house and unloaded the four baskets into the sun room.  Since there is no heat in the sun room it is ideal to store the kiwi there.  After lunch I gathered up all of the containers I could find, to put the rest of the kiwi in, as I picked them.  I filled up another smaller market basket, a five gallon bucket, and several other baskets and bowls.

As I was working, I found two bird nests up at the very top of the vines.  I just left them there as it was too high to get them down.  Many of the larger kiwi were up above the wires.  In the past I have weighed the average size fruit and found them to weigh three ounces.  This is the same size that is sold in the grocery stores.  However the larger ones weigh more, four to four and a half ounces total.  I made a clean sweep and picked all sizes, even the smaller ones which may or may not be worth the effort to peel them.

My daughter and I talked about buying an electric food dehydrator to try drying out some of the kiwi this year.  First, however, they must be ripe enough to eat.  It will not be an easy chore to determine when they are all ripe, simply because there are so many of them this year.  When they do ripen, I expect it will all happen at the same time.  This may be the year that I try some kiwi jelly!

I have many friends who like the kiwi, so thankfully they will use some of them.   With the hot, dry weather we had this past summer any harvest at all is a wonder.  I can understand why so many very small kiwi were on the vine this year.  There simply was not enough moisture in the ground for them to all develop properly.  At any rate they have all been picked for this year.  I cannot say that for the  muscadine grapes.  There were too many for me and for my grape loving friends to pick them all.  Even the deer and birds could not manage to eat all of those grapes.  Gardening is a fun hobby for the summer and fall.  When the cold winter winds begin to blow the outdoor phase of gardening is at an end.  Preserving some of the fruit is the last phase, until the seed catalogs arrive.  Then it all begins over again, otherwise there will be no harvest next fall.  So, as long as I feel game enough to repeat it all, there will always be something to harvest from this land.

Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn

My raised beds have been tucked in for the winter, thanks to Jim.  He also burned out the gasoline in the mowers, weed whacker, and chain saw.  The only thing left to do until bedding down for the cold winter is harvesting the kiwi.  That, I usually do after a frost.  We were threatened with a frost last night but it did  not materialize.  Once that has been done I can put my mind at rest.

We had a bountiful harvest of muscadine grapes this year and many happy wine makers are no doubt keeping an eye on their brew to see when it will be ready for bottling.  The first year my husband made wine from them was my first encounter with the art of making a tasty wine.  He used Higgins variety and entered his wine in the Annual Amateur Wine Makers Competition in Atlanta.  He won first place in native grapes and was so proud he couldn't stop grinning.  What I remember about that adventure was the many containers of bubbling grape juice as it fermented, and the odor permeating our home.

One other type of harvesting activity here is the season for bow hunting for deer.  One gentleman comes each year when his work allows it.  He has made two trips already.  One of them made him a very happy man.  He bagged an eight point buck.  The first time he had a deer he told me about it later and said he wanted to show it to me but decided not to.  I told him I was happy for him but glad he did not show me as I might not want him to hunt here again.  I think it is a good practice to keep the many deer here in balance but cannot bear to actually see one taken down.

Since today is the last day in October, we will be on Daylight Saving Time next week.  Also little children, and my grandson, too, will be out all dressed up and knocking on neighborhood doors singing out "Trick or Treat".  No one comes to my door as I am too far away from young families with children.  The last children who came here are now out of college and in the work force.  Halloween has never been one of my favorite times, but little children do have a lot of fun with it.  When I was teaching first graders we always had a parade through the classrooms so everyone could have the thrill of seeing other little goblins and be seen!  I participated by bringing  a huge pumpkin to school.  Every morning and every afternoon someone had the privilege of drawing a face on the pumpkin, using a special pen which could be washed off.  I took photographs of each Jack-O-Lantern and put them into a book.  I turned it into a reading book with a sentence  under each picture.  This went into our classroom library.

We all have memories of special holidays and Halloween is one of the fun times for children and a few adults.  Many years ago when I was in my teens we had parties at our church.  I recall how someone played a trick on me which was not safe at all.  My neighbor pulled a chair out from under me and I sat down hard on a concrete floor.  Boys still like to play tricks on their friends but hopefully not that kind of trick.  There were some older and rowdier boys who went around doing damage.  If you really lived out in the country and had an out house, you had to guard it or some roustabouts would slip in under cover of dark and push it over.  A favorite trick, rather a nuisance, but safer, was taking a bar of soap and marking up the windows of the businesses in town.  It was easier for  adults to hold parties for youngsters then to deal with some of the tricks which creative youngsters could initiate.

Whatever happens in your neighborhood, I hope it is a fun time, so happy memories can be filed away in the minds of little children, and this Autumn will be a happy one for all.

Serenity, NOW !!!!!!!!!!!

In one of my favorite sitcoms, Seinfeld, George Castanza's father is repeatedly irritated with one thing or another.  When this happened he would lift his arms up as he looked skyward and scream "Serenity Now".  It always made me chuckle.

This all came up in my memory yesterday when my daughter attended my church and we were in the adult Bible Study class.  We are just beginning a new study of the book of Proverbs, one of my favorite parts of the Bible.  Our teacher, our pastor, was leading us into the study for the second lesson by reviewing the lesson for last week.  This is a very good teaching technique, to set the scene for the day, by reviewing the last lesson.

The August 28th lesson was With Wisdom Comes Character, with Proverbs 1:5 and James 3:13.
After a review we began the September 4th lesson:  Proverbs 17:22 and Colossians 3:23, Enthusiasm Builds Character.  There was a lot of discussion about what Character was, etc.  Then we began to explore how enthusiasm connected with character.  The members who are still wage earners had something to say about how hard they had worked in their jobs and how no one seemed to realize the effort they had put in nor had they been recognized for all of the effort and cheerful "enthusiasm" they had put into their work.  They expressed that, though they had not asked for that pat on the back, to be ignored completely by their bosses was a real balloon bursting experience. It just took away their enthusiasm for their work, and how do we combat it in the future.  There is not a simple solution.

I just sat and listened to this discussion, but in the back of my mind I could see George Castanza's father with his red face lifted upward and his arms shaking in the air shouting "Serenity NOW !

We did not get to finish the discussion as we were running out of the time allotted for this class.  The next week we will no doubt take it up again for a reasonable conclusion.  I am thinking however, that during this week when these same people meet this same situation at their jobs, they may look at it in  a different way.  If nothing else, they may remember that not being appreciated is not a singular experience and that may give them some comfort.  Or perhaps it can help them to just dismiss it and go on without allowing  someone else to rule their own responses.

Something New Every Day

Variety is the spice of life.  As long as it does not lead to chaos.  There is something comforting about having a routine.  It can also become so boring you just have to break out and try something new.

I was not bored when I started a new thing recently, I did it on advise of my doctor.  She thought I needed to  have some set exercises to strength my bones.  She recommended Curves.  I am into my second week at Curves, and am learning to use the machines  the way they were intended to be used.  Today however, I agreed to try something new in conjunction with the machine workout.  I knew in advance what it would be but had no idea it would be so vigorous.  It is called Zumba dancing.

It has an African flavor in the music and also in the moves.  In any videos, or films I have seen with African dancers, they are all younger people.  This should have been a tip off that the workout is not for sissies.  But I went into it knowing it was not a piece of cake but would be fun.  It was fun, and it was vigorous and I did not do the moves perfectly but hey, I was in there trying!

Our teacher danced like her body was  a piece of music.  Her flexibility and dancing were impeccable.  It was fun to see her and to try to imitate her.  However, I am not sure it is for oldsters like me.  In Curves the machines and physical tolerance are within my range.  The slow exercises which I do as per directed by the Physical Therapist are also within my range of physical tolerance. So, the jury is still out on how long I will follow this new trend.  I want to wait until next week and try it again.  I am  not inclined to give up on something after only one try.

For example, last year I made many attempts to propagate kiwi, both the male an female plants.  I was not successful.  This year I tried again.  Failure.  But, I persevered, trying a different method.  Now I have both a male and a female plant still alive.  One has a green leaf unfolding at the top.  The other one is still alive and has the original piece of leaf still attached and it is still green.  The instructions I read did not say to put the cutting in water (with a trace of liquid fertilizer).  But I have propagated gardenia bushes by taking the bloom and letting it sit in water for a few weeks.  I got five gardenia bushes.  Two, I gave away.  Three are thriving here near my house.  So, I thought, if it works for gardenias then just maybe it will work for kiwi.

It is good to try new things, but within reason, and as long as no one is placed in danger.  My daughter and her husband took their 26 year old son to Six Flags for a day of fun recently.  This trip was the culmination of his two week visit from college.   They all had a great time and rode everything there.  My daughter got soaking wet on one ride.  All three of them had done this before as teens, and it was a great repeat for them.  I am pretty sure it is not for me but I was glad that they were still so young at heart.

I am not so sure that my brother at age 85  should have gone sky diving - for the first time.  But he did, and survived it just fine.  He had a great time and being able to look down on earth was an exhilarating experience .  He and our former president George H. Bush have at least two things in common.  They both are World War II survivors and both are survivors of sky diving at an advanced age. So, don't allow yourself to become bored or caught in a stale routine.  Try something new.  You just might be happy that you did.