The Cadiz back garden has three or four red currant bushes, one or two black currant bushes, a big pear tree, a purple plum tree, a walnut tree and several apple trees. The red currants looked ripe so this morning Jocelyn and I picked the bushes clean (she even cleaned them of morning glory vines) and looked online for ways to make red currant jelly.
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| a snail landed in the pot while picking |
We realized that we'd need to find some good jelly jars to start with. Our journey for these jars took us to four different German stores (Lidl, DM, Rewe and Aldi). It was inside Aldi that I realized I needed to ask a local where I could find some 'marmaladenglassen'. The small conversation about this brought everyone's attention to me at the checkout counter. A woman suggested IKEA. That is where we found the hinged jars. Not really sure the seal will be sufficient, so may end up putting the jars in the freezer for long term storage.
On our way out of IKEA I spotted a small light blue envelope on the ground. My curiosity piqued, I picked it up, thinking it was someone's shopping list or small booklet. It turned out to be a 50 euro IKEA gift card, given to a "Christian" from a volleyball team. I took it back inside and turned it in. For my ehrlichkeit I was given two 'free Swedish breakfast' cards. The 50 euros had not been spent, and the woman told me they would keep in for two weeks, and then I couldn't tell what would happen to the card. I really hope that Christian will realize he dropped his card outside the store and call them to see if it was found. That would make a nice ending, wouldn't it? It took some time and perseverance waiting to be waited on, and believe me, I was thinking all this effort is not worth my time, I should just keep the card. But I felt I couldn't live with myself if I did that, it was never my money, and there's a chance it could be returned to the owner.
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| beautiful pears |
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| purple plums |
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| purple plum tree |
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| these posts will hold up laden branches of apples |
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| Five and 1/2 pounds of red currants await the heat and sugar |
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| Team Cadiz shows us how the pros do it! |
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| Straining the hot mixture of berries and sugar |
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| In the jars at 10pm |
In our effort to get temporary ID cards today we discovered that we should have brought our expired cards that were issued 2 years ago. Who ever would've thought that an expired card would be necessary. So it meant an extra trip to a different office (driving distance away) to get an affadavit of lost card. I now have a First Offense with the US Army for having lost an expired, temporary US Air Force ID. We have to try this all over again tomorrow, since we ran out of time this afternoon to return to the first office to complete the task. Somehow today I was able to take this all in stride. There is no way to predict or be efficient with this system, as it appears that one office only knows the direction to point you in when you are actually face to face. The poor young soldier at the second office was at a loss as to how to word our predicament, as it really didn't 'fit the form'. Sigh.
