There were quite a few white apricots left over from the
last food giveaway. I took them home
and canned them. Since some people seem
to hoard my pint-sized canning jars, I had to put the apricots in quarts. I dislike doing quarts as it takes more hot
water and everyone eating my bounty is a single person. A quart of anything is a lot for 1
person. Whatever. The apricots went into the quarts and my
single people snatched them up.
I also canned some papayas, but that meant I had to do 2
batches of canning. When I took the
jars of apricots out of the hot water, the water level dropped when I put in
fewer jars of papaya. Again, whatever. I was hot and tired. I just wanted to finish the steam bath I was
getting on the hottest day of the year.
The jars looked sealed when I was done.
Since I'd run out of room in the kitchen, I put them in the outside
sunroom to cool.
A couple of days later, I decided the sunroom was probably
too hot for the jars. I brought them
inside and ignored them for a few days.
After a while, a not quite unpleasant and mysterious odor seemed to be
in the kitchen and I couldn't find the source.
I also got invaded by carpenter ants.
Now, I'm betting you see the connections in this story. I didn't.
I went on an increasingly frantic ant murdering spree until I picked up
a jar of papaya and saw it was swarmed with ants. The lid had popped off and there was an interesting, bubbling
science experiment inside.
Stomp, stomp, stomp, compost fermenting papaya, wash everything...
there were still ants. I was losing my
mind about then. I finally found a
second jar had exploded papaya all over the crowded table, the chair, the
floor... There might've been some cussing.
Sooo, lesson for the week as stated by one of my apricot recipients,
"Don't experiment with the rules of canning!" Excellent lesson. I'm hoping the ants died from botulism.
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| Properly canned papaya and apricots |
On a happier note, I've been painting more flowers. Bro2 said my other flower painting made him
think of chakras, so I did this painting with that in mind. Per Google, chakras are "(in Indian
thought) each of the centers of spiritual power in the human body". You can think of that as energy flowing
through your body. When all is healthy
and good, it flows in a direct line bottom to top and you radiate joy.
You may have noticed some people aren't radiating joy. They probably have a blocked chakra(s) and
ought to meditate on the blockage.
Chakras are like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Each chakra is color coded.
From bottom to top:
root (red) - safety, stability
sacral (orange) - joy, sensuality, emotion
solar plexus (yellow) - will, power
heart (green) - relationship, love
throat (blue) - expression, communication
3rd eye (purple) - clarity, wisdom
crown (white) - transcendence
I have to wonder where black carpenter ants fit into the
pretty chakra rainbow? My flower has
quite a bit of white in it though, so maybe I've transcended my cussing ant
murdering spree?
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| Just in case |
