The View from Rockriver Hill

     The apples are ripe again. As are the pomegranates. As with many blessings…. the orchard comes with responsibility.  I did not plant it, plan it, or raise it- but I do get to benefit from it, and I am increasingly responsible for it.  One of the primary issues with fruit from the orchard, is that it all ripens within a few weeks or days of itself, and it is far more than we can possibly eat, or sometimes even pick, before it spoils. We have apricots, pears, grapes, apples, pomegranates, persimmons, and cherries. Every year, we are faced with the task of finding some way to preserve, give away, harvest, and store the bounty of the orchard. Sugar is also another real issue with orchard fruit. Fruit is super-healthy, but eaten in large quantities (unless you are incredibly active and have a fast metabolism) will make you very fat, and give you tummy troubles. Dried fruit requires particular caution. Many people make preserves, but this also requires adding white sugar, which i

Have you ever had a picture taken of the inside of your eye? I have. During finals week of my freshman year of high school, a small grey cloud began to grow inside the upper right corner of my right eye. At first, this just made scantrons and applying eye shadow difficult, but as the cloud grew, it soon took over my entire field of vision. I could no longer read whiteboards, or books, I lost my depth perception, and began experiencing a severe ache in my left eye because of the extra strain. My mother took me to the eye doctor and he was alarmed at what he saw, and immediately referred us to the Stein Eye Institute at UCLA. My files were faxed there and we drove the 3 hours to Los Angeles. The doctors there took pictures of my retina (much more difficult in 1998 than it is now,) shone lots of lights in my eyes, and asked me many strange questions. No, I did not think I had an eye parasite. No, I did not think I had a fungal eye infection.   No, I had not travelled to th

  Salt      Today I’m grateful for salt. Literal salt, that we use to preserve food, and to enhance flavor. We used a great deal of salt this week trying to salt cure olives. It’s our first year growing olives and my first attempt at curing them. I know some people use lye, but I am nervous about that, so we decided to try salt. It has to sit for 3 weeks, and I have to stir it every day. I’ll let you know in December how they turned out.  But I’m also grateful for the salt of the earth that is, the Christians in the Kingdom of Heaven. Like my mother before me, I can’t usually get through church without my mascara streaming down my face, and my children looking at me warily and wondering if everything is okay because mother is crying. Again. Today I was crying for joy. Sometimes when I worship, I feel as if I can barely just glimpse the Church of Jesus Christ- spread across time and space- in the Kern River Valley, in Kern County, in California, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, the Philippi