This is a new beginning for me.  I have found myself among the ranks of the countless underemployed in this nation, and as I sit here and type, my hands are so cold from having to keep the thermostat down that I can barely maneuver my fingers across the keyboard. Bear with me and all my inevitable typos--except that I tend to be obsessive over correct spelling and punctuation, so I will surely correct them all before I publish this post.

As I spend day after day hoping and wondering when I will be called back to work--only to be assuredly called off again after two weeks--I catch up with friends, relatives and acquaintances, all in varying degrees of self-sustainability, and see how so many of them are becoming enterprising: one owns a bakery, one is a freelance photographer, one makes and sells beautiful jewelry, one is a tutor, and I began to explore the notion of becoming equally enterprising as well.

I grew up in a rural area, the daughter of a farmer's daughter who helped her parents and eleven brothers and sisters milk cows, gather eggs, tend a garden, bake breads and pies, and other agrarian pursuits. I watched my mother continue this lifestyle with my father throughout their entire marriage, all the while thinking it too quaint and hokey for my tastes. I helped my parents in my own way: begrudgingly pumping water from the well to water the garden, shucking corn off a cob for canning, or peeling apples for pies. In all my years growing up, I never learned how to grow the garden, can the corn or bake the pie. That was entirely my fault. I'm sure my mother would have loved to pass along her knowledge, but I was a brick-headed teenager thinking that a liberal arts degree from a major university in a big city was all I needed to get by in life. American literature, the Renaissance, continental drift and the Wonderful World of Watercolors was all so very exciting to me. Pressure canning was not.

It has been 22 years since I got that degree, and lately, I spend more days at home than I do at work. One day I went to visit my mother, who still lives in the same house she and my dad bought when they got married in 1960, and she was just coming back from the family farm with bags full of corn, beets, tomatoes and peppers that she grew herself, at age 78. It was the start of canning season for her, and I became aware of something: my father was gone, some of Mom's friends were gone and many of her brothers and sisters were gone. Yet she pluckily brought up her canning equipment from the basement, business as usual, and for the first time, in my whole life, I actually had an interest in learning how it was done. We spent the day making corn relish, pickled beets and tomato sauce; this time, however, I didn't just shuck the corn or peel tomatoes. I opened myself up to learn the process.

Since that day, we've made a few batches of jelly together to give away as gifts to friends and acquaintances. And I must say that I've been bitten by the canning bug. Where I previously stashed pizza and Chinese take-out menus, I now keep a jar lifter, lid lifter, cheesecloth, funnels, lids and rings. I stopped buying the small container of iodized salt and get instead the BIG box of Kosher salt. Apple cider vinegar by the 55-gallon drum is a staple in my house, and I have a dedicated burner on my stove just for my canner. I spend many of my days off planning my vegetable and herb garden (although my postage-stamp-sized city lot mandates I grow everything in containers), scouring flea markets and thrift stores for used jars, typing recipes into a cookbook I am creating in Adobe Illustrator, and repurposing old clothes for wiping cloths and jar covers. I have even decided not to cut down the portion of my neighbor's grapevines that are growing along the telephone lines behind my house (yes, nasty place to grow grapes because the damage to my garage was so severe, I had to tear it down) because come August, I will probably yield about 20 pints of jelly from that ill-placed urban vineyard. The pad where my garage used to be is becoming my raised bed vegetable garden.

In the 14 years since I've owned my house, this is the first year that I have not planted flowers around my yard. This year, I'm all about the fruits, vegetables and herbs. And mason jars, vinegar, sugar, pectin, Sharpies, gingham, cheesecloth, food mills, and hopefully a good amount of rain over the summer.

Thanks, Mom.