Smoke and Jam

I am pleased to tell you that by Monday we had had 6 ml of rain according to our (not very scientific) rain gauge.  It was raining when I left for work yesterday morning but that was from Hill House and I haven't had a chance to check it again.  I'll do it tomorrow morning.

The temperature has remained cool in Ballarat. It has been cooler in the fire zones.  It is supposed to warm up again later this week but not unbearably so in Ballarat. It is, after all, summer. It would be surprising if it remained in the teens or low twenties for long.

What we have had is smoke.  It has been unbelievably smoky, to the point that Jim thought that we were surrounded by fires and should we consider evacuating.  It was even worse in Melbourne, I believe.  And the smoke is now spreading its smoky love internationally.  Not just New Zealand now but also South America. You can see why something as catastrophic as a large meteor strike in the "right" place might wipe out dinosaurs.

In the meantime, I have been making fridge jam (low sugar, not boiled to within an inch of its life). I have a jar of raspberry and a jar of cherry, made with fruit I got from the market on Saturday. We have given up on the jars of apricot jam we inherited from Tony's pantry.  It's not a cheap brand of jam but all I can taste is sugar. I might take the rest of the jars to work. Someone is bound to eat it. And I'll make some apricot jam of my own when apricots are in season.  One jar :-D  (I'm not sure quite why Tony had so many jars of apricot jam in the pantry when he died. I can't see how he would ever have eaten it all.)