Of Exhausted putting up fruit~~~~

Well Darklings,

We finished putting up the last of the fruit, plum jam, cooking, prepping the jars and lids, it got warm in the kitchen, Sis and I sweating, but all worth it.

Right now the jars are cooling, Doyle printed up more labels all ready to go.  

Sis and I finished the clean up and putting everything except the filled jars, away, no the jars are cooling down in the warm kitchen,  they will be put away later.

Sis is sitting across from me with her feet up, fanning herself with the bottom of her apron, I can still feel the trickle of sweat going down my back and across my forehead, in a few minutes we will flip a coin to see who uses the shower first. 

Whoops, no Sis just dashed upstairs laughing and saying "Haw, Haw I'm going first!"  There are times when we don't feel like we're in our sixties but still young girls, giggling, fussing, sometimes feuding but not often as we always make up, sharing, hugging, and reminiscing.

While Sis was fanning herself for a brief moment I thought it was Mom as she use to do the same thing.  And Dad would call this place called Lola's near our house and order chicken dinners with French fries (big cut deep crispy fries) for pick up.  Then he and our brothers would go and get the dinners while Mom and us girls got cleaned up.

Those were wonderful days, oh there'd be bad times as well, but the good times always outweighed the bad times, like the time our youngest brother came home with 6 baby chicks from a neighbor who had chickens and a whole bunch of chicks had hatched in his brooder, and Mom saying "where are we going to keep them? we need to keep them warm"  and Dad went to the man and came home with a hen that was past laying eggs, she was going to be the man's dinner but said "Pay me $3 and ya got yur self a broodin' hen"  Well she did take good care of those chicks, which fortunately turned out to be hens and we had eggs, even the Mama hen would lay one or two on occasion,  Dad building a chicken coop, and us having a moving fence around the veggies so the chickens could pick at bugs and scratch the soil.

We never ate any of the chickens even when they stopped laying eggs, they could turn over and enrich the soil for the veggies real good.    Sometimes one would escape and come into the house through the back door and poke around the kitchen while Mom prepared dinner, then when dinner was almost ready she'd say to the hen, "whoever you are time to go to bed" and shoo the hen out and us kids would put them in their coop.

The original Lola's is long gone, but someone told me that there is another near-by, we'll have to check it out sometime, but now Doyle is saying to me "Shower, I'm going to get KFC"

In a way some things never really change.

Later Darklings