Shoes make it safe to climb a ladder

Our peaches are ripe enough for the birds to eat, so we are in a race to get them picked before they disappear. Maggie was helping. It was cute. She would pick three or four peaches and bring them over and dump them into the paper box I brought home from work.

She would pick the low hanging fruit that was Maggie high while I was up on the ladder. At some point she started climbing the ladder. She was on the first rung. I told her that I did not want her to climb the ladder. She seemed to accept this and climbed back off that rung. Then she ran into the house. She ran back out wearing her shoes and started to climb the ladder again. I told her to get off the ladder and she balked. She I climbed down to distract her with all the low hanging fruit. And she started yelling, "shoes... shoes... shoes".

Somehow the shoes permitted her to climb the ladder.

I began pondering her reasoning. And I think I understand. Some afternoons after work, I go running with her in the baby jogger. Before we leave I ask her to get her shoes. Sometime she does and sometimes she doesn't. While we are out running, she will often ask to stop at one of the parks. So, we will include the park in our route. But no shoes, no stop. So, I think she associated how the shoes make the park possible with shoes make it safe to climb the ladder.

No, shoes do not make safe for little girls to climb ladders.

We picked a small fraction of the peaches from our tree and we got about two bushels. I took the most ripe and make three batches of freezer jam. It is really good jam. It brought back fun memories of helping the family peal peaches during canning season. Now I understand why jam tastes so good. One batch of jam uses 6 and 1/2 cups of sugar for 2 and 3/4 cups of diced peaches. I was surprised all that sugar mixed in. And as a small afterthought one adds in some pectin.

I did not get home soon enough from work tonight to get any picked. So the birds are pulling ahead.

Another aside: Mother would bring home a station wagon full of tomatoes. So, we had a fair amount of pealing looming over us. Now, pealing peaches is fun. But tomato's are miserable. If you nick a finger it will sting. Even if you have no cuts, after a while your hands itch and sting. So, we would eat as many tomato sandwiches are we could. We would slice the tomatoes quite thick. And of coarse, grandma style (no top piece of bread). You don't want to waste stomach space on the bread.

All those tomato sandwiches is why I love tomatoes so much.