Apples, already

The weather has been cooler this week. Today we got a bunch of apples, from our trees and, also, from the monastery, the neighbors and friends of ours.  Some are good and we made apple crisp, apple sauce and others are bruised andna treat for the pigs!  Upstate New York is one of the best places for apples to grow. I've always been intrigued by what studies they are doing at Cornell with their fruit trees. We have 2 mature apple trees and 8 young apple trees we bought from Fedco:  honeycrisp, wealthy, Cox's orange pippin, sweet sixteen. blue pearmain, Golden Russett, Keepsake, and Belle de Boskoop.  None had flowers this spring, but some are now taller than me.  Next, we need to learn how to properly prune apple trees.

We brought apple crisp to a friend's house this morning.  The kids played nicely outdoors while we walked to their garden, saw their butternut squash, picked some cherry tomatoes and ate them, admired their calendula and other flowers.  They're growing loofah.  I remember buying seeds and never getting a long enough growing season to harvest it as a washing loofah, although I did think of eating them as they are edible.  This family also homeschools.  It's nice to talk about our plan for this year.  We'll start on Monday Sept. 2nd.