The Way I Figgered It

Day 300: The way I had it figgered, I could get five in a jar because they'd get squishy during the five-minute simmer required for the hot-pack method. Raw, three was the best I could do. I'd originally guessed at 60 for ten pints, but when I saw them on the tree, I realized they were a little bigger in real life than in my memory. I came home with 66 (a nearly full two-gallon pail!) and after processing, I had twelve pints of figs to tuck away for winter. That gives me one jar per week for the official three-month season.

Why go to all this work when I could have dried them much more easily? Because I love canned figs. Forty years ago, you could buy them in stores under the S&W brand name. They came in glass jars. They became harder and harder to find until finally disappearing from the shelves, and I swore that if I ever had a chance, I'd can my own. I am grateful to the friends in Olympia who allowed me to harvest enough from their tree (Desert King) to see me through the winter. My own tree (four years old, and a start from theirs) has not yet produced a fig although each year, it's putting on more leaves and branches. Maybe some day!

Second Time Around

Day 326: Friends of mine got married for the second time today. I'd known them for a decade before they had their first wedding thirteen years ago, and I was honored to be one of the officiating ministers despite the fact that the occasion was not then recognized by the State of Washington. Today I was only a guest, but if anything, my pleasure was greater. Today, in full accordance with state law, Karen and Beth were wed.

Many who gathered in their back yard today had been in attendance thirteen years ago to acknowledge this couple's dedication to one another; like me, some had known one or the other of them before they met. Over the years, we watched them make a home together, supporting each other through the rough patches and sharing in each other's joys. We had seen them nurture a niece, "adopted" as a daughter, raising her from an unruly child into a fine young woman. We watched them garden together and make music together, and we saw the honest love passing between them as partners. We saw in them a unity and a commitment and a strong sense of family values. We saw them, not as two women living together, but as a couple, as "married" as any of our other friends might be said to be.

Today, the State of Washington officially acknowledged the marriage of these two people, just a little slow off the mark to see what their friends knew all along: they were meant for each other.