Hildie was weaving live apple tree branches, she does it quite often, she feels it makes the branches stronger, to support the burgeoning fruit. Up the ladder, a tuck there, a twist here, down the ladder shuffle ladder, up the ladder, and then again.
Hildie, is a fair bit older than this baby boomer, and if I said she’s old school or old fashioned you may well believe me, but it’s far from the truth. She checks her computer each morning looking in the web at grandchildren, the ever eye popping political events, she has to see about her Twins baseball scores, finger on the weather button, not that any weather would or should change her plans.
Like last week, in the low 90s, Hildie was nimbly picking blueberries, barely breaking a sweat, the rest of us were melting.
In the next few weeks, she takes to canning, everything. If it’s ripe and ready, she’s saucing, juicing, salsasing, jamming, jellying, pickling, preserving every tidbit of all of it, and what she don’t grow herself, off to market; no woody peaches for her though, she’s picky.
Hildie likes summer best of all the seasons, she sits on the porch, snapping beans, shucking peas, radio coming through the kitchen window, rooting for a home run, as she sits right smack dab in the blazing sun.
--The trout whisperer
