Saving Summer

In between moments of cultivating my writing life, I'm cultivating other useful skills, in case my literary ambitions fail to sustain me. Mostly, I'm just trying to feel useful. To that end, my daughter and I spent Saturday learning to can tomatoes, under the tutelege of my mother-in-law, who lives down the street.

My son, upon joining us later, was mystified with our use of the term "can" when we were actually utilizing jars. I had no wisdom to impart on the subject.

I felt like a bit of a fumbler (hot tomatoes are slippery, as it turns out), but the end result was worth it. They're just lovely to look at, those vibrant red jars.

I could tell you how we did it, but this pretty much covers it.