Yesterday

Yesterday I walked along the edge of a small old cemetery, following a lichen-aged wood slat fence that circumscribes the top of the hill. Clouds hung mottled dark and low, and from the hill I could see the weather rolling in, displacing the early autumn sun tracing the outlines of farther ridges.My son and boyfriend followed, and my chattering toddler was happily herded away from the fence and weeds, picking up fallen artificial roses while I ducked under the fence to pluck heavy ripe blackberries from biting briars. Marc brought a rope and tied a bowline around a sturdy fencepost, and as the rain began and the two wandered back to my apartment, I started down the slope below the graveyard, keeping the rope tight around my arm as I slipped on steep damp periwinkle. I filled a two-pint yogurt container, wrapped in an old cloth diaper and tied to a belt loop, all from standing in one place. It's been a damp summer, but good for the blackberries.

I slid down to the road, leaving the rope for later, and walked back through the rain. Below the road is the county penitentiary, and above is the church whose cemetery I've been foraging. Cold rain was welcome after sweaty work, and I picked up trash and crabapples from unattended trees, came back around the ridge to fetch the rope, and presented the berries and my damp self to my boyfriend's arms.

"You're freezing!"

"Feels good though. Think we have enough to brew?"

"That's why I'm still holding you, it's been hot in here - oh what yes?!"

So we have now a chorus of glugging, chirping fermentation. The five-gallon bucket under my bathroom sink is converting sweet tea to some perverse homebrew (we tasted it last night, and it smells like holding a glass of Pinot Grigio and a fresh yeast roll under your nose, and tastes like a mouthful of the two but less complex than wine - he says all is as it should be), and atop the fridge a reused wine bottle holds opaque screamingly fuschia blueberry juice and yeasts, clockwork ticking bubbles popping through an improvised vapor lock. The blueberries were given to us yesterday morning at the Farmer's Market, when we wandered by to say hullo to his mother as she peddled ceramics and lavender and surplus fruit from her garden.

And a gallon glass jug of bright red blackberry juice waits in the fridge, promising to begin this evening, when Aaron returns from working in his mother's studio and hopefully brings a proper vapor lock from his father's unused homebrewery.

My son has blanketed the floor of my tiny apartment with his toys. Walking back to my reading chair will be a crunchy kicking adventure, but I might have time to finish my coffee and go a little further through the "Manual of Practical Homesteading" before he's tired of the solitary moments of our morning.