How’d you survive the soggy weekend? Did you have to be out in the downpours and drizzle, or did you get to curl up with a nice catalog of seeds and bulbs and dream about the bee garden you’re going to plant next spring?

I’d intended to pull out the jungle of tomato vines in the garden and get some of my 200 daffodil bulbs planted. Oh yeah, and put the cider press together. The “mostly assembled” press arrived in 8 cartons and about 105 pieces. This could take some time…

Fortunately, I had a couple of buckets of apples that I’d intended to press for cider sitting around, so we spent the rainy days making 20 jars (two kinds) of apple butter. In one recipe, we used our own honey. I know they are both good, but taste is a bonus at this point. Cooking the apples filled the house with the most fabulous, fall aroma for hours. It was olfactory heaven!

It’s been a growing season a lot like that. I didn’t always do or get what I expected, but there’s been some wonderful discoveries along the way. Maybe that’s the point — to keep discovering things about plants, food and myself.

I’m grateful to have been able to share some of my adventures with you all, and I appreciate your ideas, advice and enthusiasm. Thank you for coming along and sometimes leading the way. Thanks to Jaime, too, for letting me earn my GreenGirl badge this season. It’s been a blast!

With all the rain, my grass (that’s my lawn, not my sprig of ditchweed, just for those of you keeping track) is growing faster than anything in my garden lately. And that might be okay.

I’ve spent the week canning pickles, pasta sauce, salsa and about four kinds of jelly. I’m out of lids, out of jars, and out of the mood — at least for the moment.

Where are you at with your garden? Are you giddy with harvest happiness? Or have you entered the zone of indifference?

This weekend’s rain made it very unappealing to be in the garden, but it was perfect for doing some canning in the kitchen. There are a lot of ways to preserve food — from freezing to drying to canning. I huddled over the Ball Blue Book (sort of the bible of home canning) and several other recipe books, and by the end of the weekend, the canner and I became pretty good pals.

Remember the wild plums I gathered up last week? Well, my partner and I actually did make plum jelly from the juice of them. It was a such a beautiful color and had such vivid flavor, I was inspired to pick wild grapes growing around my neighborhood (that sight raised a few eyebrows!) and make grape jelly too. And I had to do something with all those tomatoes, so pasta sauce was an easy answer. I even used the garlic, onions and basil from the garden in it. Before we were done, we’d also made pickles and apple maple jam, too!

I spent my childhood summers helping my mom and grandma can and freeze the harvest. To be honest, I didn’t think it was that much fun then. My friends were at the pool or going to movies, and I was blanching green beans. But now, I can think of few things more satisfying that saving some of the wonderful flavors of summer for fall and winter. I even get a little rush of pride knowing I did it myself.

How do you preserve your harvest? Have you used a canner before and had success?

If you’re new to canning, here are some sites (they include recipes) to get you started:

National Center for Home Food Preservation

Bella’s Successful Home Canning page

Consumer site of the manufacturer of Ball and Kerr canning supplies

Wow! What a storm that was!

My rain gauge this morning says we got 4″ of rain last night. I won’t bother to say that I wish we’d gotten 1″ for the last 4 weeks, because I’m just happy to have rain, have power, and not have any major damage. Were you as lucky? Did you rush out and look at your garden this morning to see if everything survived? Any damage reports at your house?

Last night before the lightning show started, I walked around the yard and noticed there were plums on the ground. The fruit were on the huge old wild plum tree were ripe. I ran in the house and got my picking bag and then sat out under the tree and picked a whole bag of fruit. Today’s mission: Make wild plum jelly.

When the storm started, I knew I’d be back out there this morning, since the rain and wind would knock hundreds more plums off the tree. This morning’s walk confirmed that’s just what happened. So for the next hour or so, you know where to find me.

I am a bad, bad blogger. I’ve been so busy setting up blogs for other Strib folks that I haven’t had a chance to work on my own damn blog. (New bloggers are all so eager and enthusiastic. Soon they will experience the frustrations of blogging under deadline and managing an onslaught of blog spam — Whee!)

Our hostess, June and Barb (left) serve up a delicious chocolate cake.

It has been a busy two weeks outside of the office, too. The Minnesota State Fair, Bob Dylan, and Snakes on a Plane, the highlight of all this extra-curricular activity was bumping into Barb Schaller at a dinner party.

Excuse me, Barb Who?

Barb “State-Fair-Canning-Queen” Schaller is the Samuel L. Jackson of the Creative Arts Building. Make no mistake, this sassy dame ain’t Susie Homemaker. Her spicy cherry chipotle jam will spank you in your seat faster than you can say, “Enough is enough!”

Chances are you’ve tasted the fruits of her labor, too. Ever try Gedney’s peach-raspberry jam? That’s Barb’s blue ribbon winning recipe. She gets half a cent for every jar sold.

The Gedney pickle hat and state fair medals should’ve tipped me off, but instead, I talked her ear off about my heirloom tomatoes (I brought along a salad fresh from my garden and got a little too big from my britches).

“I really want to learn how to can. I got a little lesson from my friend Danika, but…”

Barb smiled wide. I suddenly put two and two together, shut my mouth and opened my ears. Jar sterilization, botulism, food safety classes, heirloom plums, and more botulism — Guests got up for seconds, but I was glued to the edge of my seat.

At the end of the evening, Barb gave me her card. Barb’s avatar looked nothing like her, but her slogan said it all: If you’re ever in a jam, here I am.

“Give me a call if you need some jars. My husband is dying for more storage space.”