Gorgeous Grapes

As I sit down to begin to blog this evening, I'm sipping fresh grape juice, made only hours ago from our very own home-grown grapes.

Last evening Jeff started the project when he harvested the grapes in the photo above from our grapevine. These are Concord grapes, my very favorite grapes in all the world--such a rich, intense flavor they have!

(As an aside, I remember when we lived in San Diego; and once a year, the grocery stores would stock Concord grapes. Jeff would often buy me some as a special treat. And now--now we have all we want--for free!)

Today--while Josiah and I had Learning Time, while I went to the post office to mail a package, while I napped, while I did laundry and packed for our vacation--my wonderful mother was hard at work, turning these luscious grapes into juice and canning it. I felt bad taking a nap instead of helping her; but she reassured me that I really should sleep, especially because I've caught a little cold (as have Josiah and now David as well) and am trying very hard to recover from it before our vacation!

Not only did she make the juice (which she was doing here in my kitchen because of more room and familiarity with the space--this is, after all, the place where she has canned for 30+ years, so we always do the canning up here), but she also cleaned up the kitchen completely tonight--not just the items she used for canning, but all the rest of the supper dishes that didn't fit in the dishwasher, and anything else she could possibly find to clean.

Am I spoiled or what??? :)