Pears are Falling, Peaches are Finished.

My neighbor has a Kieffer pear tree that is getting old like me. This year the pears are small, but have a lot of sugar content. Picking a few today, I felt that special tug that Autumn presents, an age old instinct of gathering, preserving and feeling thankful for the small things in life. Not that food gathering is a small thing. Imagine how in times past the preservation and storing of food was a thing of life or death.

My mother was raised on a wheat farm in Oklahoma, and she had a no nonsense approach to food. Our table was not laden, but it was lovingly prepared food that always had a careful hand behind it. She often spoke of the harvest lunches she helped prepare for the horde of men working to get the grain cut and stored. Homemade rolls and bread, many kinds of pies, and several types of meat. They had a spring house, which I once saw when very young, cut into the hillside where the spring flowed. It was so cool inside, and ice could be stored, as well as butter, milk, and cream. I wish I could have sat at that table, but I did experience great meals when we went to visit our grandparents. My grandmother baked bread every other day, and the smell was intoxicating. Death to anyone trying to bounce on the kitchen floor when it was in the oven. As kids we learned to avoid the kitchen unless invited in. Mother never learned how to bake bread, as her mother didn't want her to learn, expecting her to work on being a professional lady. She really was raised almost as a princess, and so Southern girls are not the only ones so anointed. She studied singing and posed for a local photographer who took art studies. I have one of her standing with her back to the camera, an oriental shawl draped over her shoulder. In another she is done up as an Oriental girl, hold a vase up to admire. In another, she could pass for Zelda. Willa Cather spoke alot of truth about art and growing up in Oklahoma, Nebraska and Kansas. "The Song of the Lark" catches shades of my mother is a riveting way.

Getting back to the pears. I made two pints of preserves, one for me, and one for a brother-in-law who always asks every year for some. As I reached up in the branches today, having to stretch to reach the best ones....(the best are always hard to get)...I caught a glimpse of the golden fruit against the brilliant blue of the September sky. Blue and gold..always a satisfying mix.