Lughnasa                                                             Harvest Moon

Kate and I were out before 8 am today harvesting raspberries, tomatoes, cucumbers and ground cherries.  The tomatoes and cucumbers are in their last week +.  The ground cherries seem set to keep on producing through the first heavy frost and the raspberries have only begun to ripen.  We still have peppers and leeks, a few greens left.

During our weekly business meeting we melted more bees wax and this time attempted to fill the mold.  Only I had not melted enough wax so I had to melt some more.  That means the molds which didn’t fill ended up with two layers of wax.  That worked out ok in a couple of cases, not in two others.

Discovered that the wax has to be washed since the remnant honey, which has a different specific gravity than the wax, gathers and in two cases created a plug of honey between two layers of wax.  Those two have gone back in the bowl for remelting.  I have seven beautiful sweet smelling candles and will have a few more, probably made this time in half-pint canning jars for gifts.  Rendering some more wax as I write this.

After the business meeting, I drove into Verdant Tea and bought two yixing tea pots.  This is a present to myself for finishing Missing and getting ready to write Loki’s Children.  They’ll be in constant use.  Yixing teapots are perfect for the Chinese way of tea, Gong Fu Cha.  Each teapot goes through a seasoning process (at home) and then makes only one type of tea.  The porosity of the yixing clay fills up with the oils of that particular tea and enhances the flavor.  This is a centuries old tradition in China.