The first of three days roaming New York City, Scott and I walked the length of the High Line. I was totally taken by this setting. The designers built what looks like an amphitheater into the park, but instead of a screen or stage, your attention is focused at the street scenes below. We paused for a moment to watch and it was a pretty darn good show.

A impulse buy at the Greengrow Farms, I ate them one by one in the car, while driving back to work.

Some mornings, I come to consciousness with the dreams from my sleeping hours still swirling thick around my head. Other mornings, remnants of my dreams are completely absent, as if I spent my sleep sitting cross-legged, clearing my brain and chanting “om.” Yet other days, the dreams are initially absent but then trickle back, like postcards mailed to yourself from faraway places.

That’s how it’s been today. I woke up this morning to classic music playing on the radio and Scott gently nudging me with his knee (his way of reminding me that I promised to take the first shower this morning and let him sleep for a few extra moments). I bathed, dressed and made breakfast, without any thought to dreams. My thoughts were happily occupied with plotting out my workday tasks and cramming in visits to new babies and a CSA pick-up.

It wasn’t until I was at work this morning, spooning yogurt and fruit into my mouth, that I remembered the previous night’s dream. In it, one of my front teeth had become alarmingly loose. I kept trying to cram it back into place, but it would always return to a precarious dangle. Eventually it fell right out. In the dream I despaired, but then shrugged and continued on with my day.

Later, as I read an article about a man who ate for just $1 a day for 100 days, another dream drifted to the surface. In it, I was staying in a house with two apple trees in the backyard. The apples were ripe, but no one was picking them. I announced that we should make sauce or jam or pies, and everyone acted as if I was crazy.

“Don’t you know that apples grow everywhere around here?” they asked. “They are best for throwing, not for eating.”

Despite their protestations and long stairs, I bent to pick the windfall apples. I would show them.

Once a year, I make raspberry jam. Most of the berries I picked last night went into the canning pot tonight, with just enough sugar to hold things together and a bit of lime juice. I think it’s pretty much the best stuff on earth and now I have six glowing half pints of it.

An afternoon at Mood’s Farm Market, picking raspberries and buying half a bushel of nectarines. I live for the fruit of summer.

Last week, the LA Times ran a story about canning and they included me! Thanks so much to Carol for popping her copy into the mail for me!

I am sad this picture is out of focus, but it delights me so that I couldn’t bear not to choose it as today’s featured image. It is of Audra and Kate laughing away, as Audra empties the contents of a spice bag (part of the homemade ketchup process) into Kate’s compost bin. It so wonderfully captures the fun we had at the canning party today.

Confession time. I don’t know how it happened, but I didn’t manage to take a single picture on Saturday, August 7th. I taught a class in the morning, went to a farmers market, made myself lunch, spent a couple of hours with Shay, made blueberry jam, picked Scott up from the train station, went out for Vietnamese food and looked through all the fun stuff that Scott brought back from Blogher.

It was an amazing full and lovely day that went completely unrecorded. So, as something of a placeholder, and so as not to screw up the count, a picture from the following day, of Audra holding her vivid, green Jarritos soda, at a taco spot in Brooklyn, post-canning workshop.

Sungold tomatoes. Basil. Parsley. Lemon juice. Salt. Pepper. Truffle oil.

Divine.

The sunset down Walnut Street. Such a gorgeous summer evening.