Peach Harvest

Our kitchen smells of peaches (which is a good smell).

That's not surprising because peach harvest is here.  We have one peach tree and when we get peaches from it, we got a lot of peaches.

What would be nice is if some reasonable number of peaches would ripen every week -- maybe 20 or 30 and we could eat them over a couple of month's time.  Instead, we got home from spending time with my family to find that we had three bushels of peaches that needed to be "taken care of."

With this in mind, Elaine has been peeling and slicing peaches to make a variety of things, including peach pie, peach bread, peach spinach salad, and peach muffins.  On the canning side she has canned peach jam, peach salsa, peach butter, and peach pie filling.

Somehow being in the middle of peach season makes me think about other seasons.  Life is about seasons.  Elaine is expecting our fifth child.  We are soon going to be moving from one season of our life to another.

The writer of Ecclesiastes said, many years ago, "For everything there is a season."

We are going to be moving from a season of diapers and bottles, into a season of driver's permits and college entrance exams.

The reality is that when you are going through a particular season of your life it is hard to enjoy the good parts and much easier to focus on the aspects where it feels overwhelming.  More often than not we feel more like an entrant into a hot dog eating competition than an attendee at a cook out.

It is hard to enjoy peaches when they are coming out your ears, but a ripe peach is hard to beat and I still enjoy eating them.  In December I know I will think fondly of the tasty fruit we had on our tree, even though we have felt a bit overwhelmed this week.

It is important to try to spend time enjoying whatever season we are in now.  Later on, all we will have are the memories of it that we make today.