A Study in Abundance

When I've got nothing to say. 

But I've committed to write every day.

I've been here before. I think about my mentors in the craft. Keep your pen moving. Keep your pen moving. But I have no pen here today, just the keys tapping beneath my fingers. Keep the keys tapping. Keep the keys tapping. Keep them tapping until you slip back into the stream of words that flow from the whorls on your fingers.

Yesterday's trip into the Princeton farmers market left me with an abundance of fruit and the sudden realization that I will never be able to eat that much fruit while it's fresh. Everything except for raspberries was being sold in quarts rather than pints. There must be a thousand blueberries in a quart. I came home with strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. Today I've got two jars of strawberry-blueberry jam in the fridge. It's mystery jam because, even though I used two cups of strawberries and one cup of blueberries, cutting the recipe in half, I ended up with a jam that tastes, smells, and looks more like blueberry jam. I may need to make another tiny batch with just strawberries. That's really what I wanted. And the recipe promised that adding some blueberries would not darken the jam or diminish the strawberry flavor, but would simply deepen the flavor. It's okay. I've got a recipe for hand pies, and this jam will work perfectly with it. 

So now instead of too much fruit, I've got too much fruit, too much jam, and will soon have too many hand pies if I make them. Fruit must be the miracle food because it just keeps stretching and stretching with every attempt to use up the extra. A study in abundance. 

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life.