Today I'm reflecting on WHY I BOTHER WITH CANNING SEASON.

It was hot the day I picked the peaches. It took 2 days to process them all, and the kitchen was like Georgia in July with the canning pots belching out steam for hours on end.

The pots are huge. Black with white speckles, and the lids rattle as the water boils, sounding like a never-ending earthquake.

The windows are covered with condensation, with slow trickles of water running onto the sill.

Juice runs to my elbows as I peel, dripping on the floor and saturating my apron with the sticky, sweet mess.

Baskets of the fuzzy, sweet skin create an overwhelmingly heady and delicious smell that clings to anyone passing through the kitchen, as if they had been sprayed with an intoxicating perfume.

I toss the skins into the yard, making many chickens happy, who then decide to camp out on the kitchen stoop so they can peer into the glass door and use secret chicken powers, forcing me to throw out more.

I make jam, fresh-packed halves, and pie filling. The ping of the lids satisfies me in a funny way.

The jars now stacked in the pantry are a beautiful combination of orange, reds, and yellows that seem to glow and look like a flashy, exotic concoction in glass.

I’m always a heroine deep in the cold, damp winter when the smell of a fresh pie wafts through the house. My family is coaxed into slumber with full bellies, lips still sticky with syrup, while the cold of winter swirls around outside.

What a blessing it is to go from a kitchen that felt like summer in the Deep South to cracking open this jar of sunshine in January.