For a moment there, the jam project seemed to be a huckleberry over my persimmon.

This old English saying means just a bit over my ability; and when my huckleberry jam turned rock hard last week, I thought that I might be in just that kind of pickle. With the Slow Food dinner a day away and six person-hours invested in the picking, cleaning, and preparing of the wild huckleberry jam, I needed an intervention. Not necessarily divine, just a solution to my unspreadable jam.

Hermit crabs do not need to worry about the rising price of real estate on the Vineyard.

It is not that they are in the lottery for an affordable homesite, nor will they inherit a house from a wealthy relative (although they might steal one.) Home ownership is just not a priority for this creature. It has no desire to settle down permanently; its affinity for moving makes it destined to be a renter, but never an owner.

Morning glory hallelujah!

Walt Whitman might have sung the praise of this flower since he noted that “a morning glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.”

Another famed poet, Henry David Thoreau, concurred. In his tribute he observed that this flower is “well named morning glory. Its broad, bell and trumpet-shaped flowers, faintly tinged with red, are like the dawn itself.”

Ronald Rood had a great and somewhat timeless concept for a book. In 1971, he penned a little paperback titled Animals Nobody Loves, highlighting the wonders of some often-maligned creatures. The author cleverly divides the book of unloved critters into three sections, based on the reasons for finding them objectionable: The Way They Look, The Way They Act, and A Little of Both.

Pass the peas please!

No one is happier than I am about the preponderance of peas. We are nearing legume lunacy — snap, sugar, English, snow and others adorn many gardens and many minds.

Ouch — both literally and metaphorically.

I will say pointedly that thistle has some sharp issues. To look at this plant, one might think of a pincushion due to its predilection for prickles. You can find them on its stem, leaves, bracts, and even the single bulbous flower head.