for the love of muscadines

Sorry for the lack of posting lately, dear readers. It's been a crazy busy summer, capped off by two weeks of out-of-my-comfort-zone events, and a dreadful cold on the heels of that.

But nonetheless, the muscadines are ripening and had to be either picked or lost. So we've set about doing that the last couple of days; picking the ones from the vines we can reach, and the ones we can't, we have to pick up when they fall on the ground. (Understand that our muscadines are wild, and grow all through the tops of the trees.)

There was one particularly tempting cluster just out of reach, and I've pondered and schemed to try and find a way to get to them. But in the process of that, I looked up, and over my head was the motherlode; a vine had grown probably 35 feet tall in a tree, and hung thick with clusters of muscadines. They were so ripe and ready that they would fall to the ground with every breeze, hitting the leaves of the underbrush as they fell as if to taunt me. I could not get to them - the growth was too thick. They'd just have to lie there and rot.

Then I got angry. Those were my muscadines, growing on my vines, in my trees, on my land. So I did what any (crazy) person recovering from a dreadful cold would have done: I went inside and got the sling blade weed cutter thing and hacked away enough of the brush to get to the muscadines as they fell.

It made me feel like my great-grandmothers, grandmothers and mother a little bit; strong, resourceful, stubborn women who saw something that needed to be done and did it. I hope I resemble them, anyway.

Was it worth it? I'll let you know when I taste the jelly. And when I see how much poison oak I have from this little adventure. ;)