Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Apple-Picking
We went apple-picking on Sunday. The nice guy who always mans the scales at Jaswell Farms (that's him, far left, front row: www.jaswellsfarm.com) cheerfully said that they'd lost forty percent of their crop. Some of their orchards were in better shape than others, he said -- but while one farm in the area was essentially unaffected, another farm won't even be opening for pick-your-own at all this fall. Yikes. (We took three bags and did a little informal wealth-redistribution, to the tune of 20 lbs. of fruit.)
The first pie of the year was, as usual, quite good. The Big Girl got to help out with peeling the apples, using a Grown-Up Tool, the apple-peeler:
Here's what the kids look like when only their parents are around:
Middle Son will be going on a class trip to the very Jaswells Farm Pumpkin Patch seen in the background, above, on Friday. He's shivering with excitement.
And in other news, the new grass begins to appear:
That was Saturday; it's filled in much more since then. And Bill said that since there were three kinds of grass -- Rye, Fescue, and Bluegrass -- some would come in within seven to ten days, some in a couple of weeks, and some requiring as much as a month. So we have something to look forward to.
Our neighbors' annual block/birthday/family party was last weekend, and their were lots of people looking wistfully at the grass shoots and asking about our landscaper. I would like to think he'll get a little business out of it and then offer to come back and work on my yard for free. (Hey, a guy can dream...)
