Grapes After the Rain and A Little Bumble Love

Concord grapes are ripening like gangbusters. I'll be making jelly this week if all of the bees, wasps, and yellow jackets don't annihilate them first. The August heat and humidity are brutal here, but the abundance of tomatoes, beans, okra, figs (or 'Pigs' as Carlyn calls them), and grapes that they bring along make them a bit more tolerable.

Mom and dad grew Concords on Mom's old clothes line back home. I remember going down and picking them still warm from the afternoon sun and standing right there beside the vines and eating them. It really doesn't get much sweeter. Well, I take that back. My mom and her mom (my Nanny Jackie), take the juice and make jelly from them which does up the sweetness factor by more than a few cups of sugar. My kids biscuits and peanut better sandwiches have been bejeweled with the shiny sweet jellied goodness pretty much since they've been in the world. Blessed young 'uns, I'd allow.

And if you have someone who grows and fixes fresh fruits and vegetables for you, you should probably go and give them a hug and a kiss and a hearty thank you right this very minute because it's a very sweet thing, indeed, to have in your life.