Sour Grapes

Teeth on Edge

“The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.” Jeremiah

The tiny seedling promise of abundant grapes first appeared in late June. The vines had been trimmed in winter. When they were finally large enough to pick a few to try, they were mouth-puckering sour.

Not only must you wait until they turn that deep purple you see, but in order to produce enough sugar to make them palatable, they need to be hit by a frost. With all the rain, and going longer than we can remember without a killing frost, there was concern for the juice and jelly Lacey makes from them.

There’s some transferable metaphor to depending on killing frost to make sweet fruit.

I’ll leave you to wonder at the design that seems contradictory to how we measure and understand soliciting the sweetness we long for.

And what to make of our efforts to rush it. The juice is pretty sour.

Sets a body’s teeth on edge.