Last Thursday night I made two peach pies — one from canned pie filling, and the other from peaches recently picked off a co-worker’s peach tree. The next day, a Facebook Memory popped up of the time, almost exactly ten years before, when I had made a peach pie from the fruit of the tree in my own yard. I didn’t even remember making it. Ironically, when I looked through my cookbooks for a good pie recipe I found and passed over the recipe I had used a decade ago in the Laurel’s Kitchen cookbook. This time I used the recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook.
Earlier in the year I had tried to start an avocado tree from an avocado pit, and my efforts went exactly nowhere. So I have no idea why I decided to save the pits from the six peaches that I had peeled and sliced. But save them I did, and then I found a short YouTube video that showed how to crack open the pits, release the seeds, and coax the seeds to root. How could I resist?
No pictures were taken during the pit-cracking process, but I can assure you that after much straining and squeezing, the use of inappropriate household tools, and the launching of several pit shards, Eldest and I managed to free all six peach seeds with a minimum of damage to the Seeds Themselves. I will leave the details to your imagination. It’s safe to assume that if we do this again (and Youngest made me “swear” that I would not), we will not be recording the process.
Here is what I did with the seeds:
The next step is to check on the seeds in a week to see if they have started to grow tiny roots. If they have not, then my job is to moisten the paper towel again and check it again after three or four more days. I think I might be able to handle this. And seriously, if I can raise a tree from this process, anyone can. Second or third-graders would probably do particularly well. If you know one, I would be happy to send them some peach pits and let them take it from there.
This afternoon I went back-to-school shopping with youngest, and when we got to Target I picked up a fresh bag of potting soil and a plastic pot that had been marked down to $2.10. Even better: it is peach colored. It’s destiny, I tell you.
In other news, I bought another vintage typewriter. It’s five years younger (1947) but belongs to the same generation as the Royal KMM I bought a month ago. For $20 I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to adopt another member of the Royal family.
Alas, both typewriters need new ribbons. That shouldn’t be terribly hard to arrange, since I can order universal ribbons and adapt the ribbon part to the Royals’ proprietary spools. I should order some latex gloves so that I don’t stain my fingers in the process. After that, all I will need is time and space….
Knitwise, there is still no progress on the scarf for SecondSon. I hereby pinky-swear that I will find the right-size needle and set up a project bag after I publish this post. A project bag means that a knitter is Serious About Starting the Project.
The other thing I need to do with my knitting is to stop it from cluttering up my bedroom. I need to start exercising again, but my right leg and ankle are still unstable after the fall I took almost two weeks ago. Sit-ups would seem to meet the requirement of non-weight-bearing exercise, but my room is too cluttered with things to give me enough room to put down an exercise mat. All I will need is time and space…. this is beginning to sound familiar.
Chocolate Sheep 