Elderberry juice! I steam juiced elderberries the past two weekends and made jelly last night with half the juice. So much sugar. Lesson learned: there is no such thing as too big a pot. The house might still smell like burnt sugar. The win: i remembered to change out of my new shirt and white pants BEFORE opening the juice. Christine likes the flavor, so this is a jelly that i can make that will replace some fraction of her jelly consumption. I'm thinking 4 pint jars might do it. Then someday i will have mayhaws.... Meanwhile, i fantasize about Clowderwood food gifts for friends and family. I was sick during onion scape season so no pickled onion scapes. But there will be figs a plenty this year. Chestnuts and persimmons as well.

I spent my therapy time looking for ways to get in touch with my banked feelings. Banked, like a campfire is banked. Or shoved in the garage. I probably need to journal more about them: it seems i need to communicate to reach them. They don't come forward on their own easily.

Monday night i was standing on the dark deck -- was it cloudy or partly cloudy? I may have seen a satellite through the clouds -- then i was staring at the woods wondering if i would see a firefly. I think they have gone dark for the season. I thought of how i like to imagine our souls, our being, as waves in a shared sea. I am distinct for a while  and subside into the shared being that is ... the Divine? The unity of earth's life? I can frame it in many ways. But then i remembered the one time in Meeting for Worship where i was meditating about being in the presence of the Divine, and then had the experience of the Divine seeing me. Which was an uncomfortable exalting intensity. On Monday night that memory pulled up pain and anger. For me, that which Is acts through our hands and sees through our eyes. So many US citizens choosing not to see others but to replace them with stereotypes and tell stories and not witness truth. I am so angry and so pained by this. center