Overwhelmed by Plums

I am truly overwhelmed with plums. Actually, they are called greengages. The first batch was fun, but then I kinda got into it and felt compelled to do something with all of those plums. Well, at least a few more. The trees are covered with ferocious ants. I say that because they bite. They clearly do not want anyone intruding on their territory and taking their fruit. So it’s a battle with ants to pick fruit. We’ve tried spraying them, but nothing works. We surrendered.

We found some cute canning jars at the local mercado. I ended up making 24 jars of plum-lime jam. The limes were picked from the lime tree that’s in a pot next to the plum trees. 24 jars probably doesn’t seem like much to my niece Anne Miller, who cans grosses of jars of fruit and vegetables every year. Me, well, I was exhausted after just 24.

And then six of the jars didn’t seal. I almost texted Anne to ask what I should do. But, thanks to Google and UTube, I decided to just reprocess them. Let’s hope that works.

We’ve had some rain and the temperature has cooled a bit. The plants are happy, although I think they could use more water. Now it’s time to mow. Mike will mow House 2, and the Foragers (Marta and Rafael) are coming tomorrow to take care of House 1. Hopefully they will take baskets full of plums home with them.

The highlights of our week were a trip to Vasto to try to open a bank account. We were not successful, but we learned a lot and the banker was nice enough to set up an appointment for us with a banker who speaks English. We will meet with her when we return later this month. Then we had a nice lunch at one of our favorite restaurants overlooking the Adriatic. Since it was Friday, we stopped at the mercado for porchetta and a beer. Paul and Justina and Paul’s sister and her friend were there. Then Wendy and Mario showed up. It was a fun evening.

Saturday we drove to Lanciano and had lunch with friends Ray and Heidi at a Chinese restaurant. It was good to see them and catch up. And the food was good too.

On Wednesday we are off to the States for three weeks. Another whirlwind trip. New York, Ledyard CT, Chicago, Cincinnati, Oklahoma City, Houston, and back to Chicago before flying home. Maria left this week to go to the UK to see her granddaughter Rosaria and will bring her back to Italy for a couple of weeks. But we won’t get to see her as she will leave before we return. And our neighbor Justina who has been here for several weeks will return to her work in the UK before we arrive home. Makes me sad to miss them.

While in the States, I’ll be posting photos on Facebook, but probably won’t blog until I return.

Ci vediamo dopo!