The Smell of Pink

Six p.m., I was showered and drinking coffee by 9 a.m. yet somehow the nectarines took my whole day. Even as I sit here gazing out to the yard another nectarine has just fallen, bouncing along the lawn. Hours and hours of boiling them, skinning them, slicing to preserve them and still I see a dozen or more on the ground and if I was to turn my head I'd see that many again on the counter. The birds eat their share, sadly though they tend to peck from many, leaving most of the nectarine behind to rot. If I could get them to concentrate on the bruised ones on the ground we would all be better off. I line those bruised ones up, over night, near the bird bath but they don't seem to take the hint.
The smell of nectarines has permeated the house in a good way.
I am not sure that my day was not wasted, I definitely spent my hours in the realm of having no idea what the end product was. Laughably, I was startled half-way through when I tasted my nectarines to find that they tasted like, well like canned peaches, well sort of fresher and also I had infused the syrup with basil. My point being that I was just following the recipe and not realizing that canning the nectarine would indeed be like store bought canned fruit. I love fresh fruit, nectarines are a favorite and I have never seen the point of doing anything with a nectarine other than eat them, one after another. I have only come around to this idea of preserving them because I am physically unable to eat them all before they go bad.
The water I boiled the nectarines in to get the skins off, turned a beautiful, clear pink and smelled almost as good as the tree. I don't know how this first attempt went, as I only got three jars worth and I think the fruit may have been cut too fine, but I was trying to use up fruit that had to have bits cut away, because I can't bear to see any worth eating going into the compost.
I am trying to find a hand cranked ice-cream maker so I can make nectarine sorbet and nectarine ice-cream. If anyone has ideas for the nectarines there are many left on the tree to deal with as the week goes on. I think I'll go out and just grab the new ones that have fallen...