This week has been spent harvesting the vegetable plants, grape vines and fruit trees. We made jelly with ten and a half pounds of white concord grapes which yielded thirteen 12 ounce jars of jelly. This year we added calcium water to the pectin which allowed us to cut the sugar almost in half.

The jelly making inspired me to harvest some little peaches from a tree that's been trying really hard to produce a nice crop this year. The tree was loaded with small peaches just beginning to ripen up. So the first night the valley was threatened with a killing frost, I picked about 25 pounds of peaches, brought them in and am letting them ripen indoors. The taste of the peaches isn't that good, but the tree put out such an effort that it seems the least we can do is make some peach jelly. I'll add a little peach nectar to the juice for a flavor boost.

The tomato crop was not nearly as large as recent years past. Not nearly. Usually the day before the frost we bring in enough green tomatoes to line all the window sills in the house several layers thick. This year we'll be lucky to fill two sills with a single layer.

We also brought in all the house plants that live out of doors in the summer, but must come back in to escape the winter cold.

We then made baba ganoush with several small eggplant, baked some pita bread, then went to see the Nevada Opera's production of Carmen. It was an excellent show.