The Apple Thief

First Frost

It happened.  First frost.  The ending of another garden season.  I am always happy to welcome the first frost because I know that with it, the garden chores will be coming to an end.  Trust me, by October, I am ready for them to be coming to an end!  But a garden doesn't go out with a slow fizzle but with a mad dash.  In preparation for the first frost, we had to get everything we could out of the garden and off of the trees.  And that meant a very busy week indeed.

Lots of green tomatoes to line all the windowsills and too many too small peppers (if only they had a bit more time!).  Vases of cosmos and zinnias, lemon verbena and basil, squashes both summer and winter.  Digging up the sweet potatoes.  Renegade beets.  Too many apples to pick- many still hang frozen on their branches.  All week we've been digging up and bringing in.

Saturday was applesauce making day. 37 quarts of applesauce made- and only half the apples we had picked used up.  I had hoped to make at least 52 quarts (for once a week applesauce eating) but a girl can only do so much in a day even with many small, helpful hands in the kitchen working alongside her.

The children gathered 'round and dove right in to the apple chores when I first began.  Adele' said "Mama, I wanna be just like you when I grow up.  It's so fun to can."  As time went on, one by one they eventually peetered out and scooted off to do other things, but every now and again I would find myself with some more helpers before they again scooted off.  By 6:30 pm, as I was finishing off the last of the canning dishes, Adele' had come again to help with apples and was filling up the last of the jars with applesauce.  Says she: "Canning is fun in the beginning but when you work at it all day, it can make you pretty tired."  smile.  How right you are.

I had hoped to fill up many more buckets of apples before frost so that when we host a church picnic in a few weeks, we could have a cider-making party at the same time.  The rest of the apples we never sauced will go for the cider but the yield won't be nearly as substantial as I had hoped.  I was hoping to can some cider for drinking later.  The frozen apples taunt me.  

I can never seem to get everything done that I would like and, even though this is a fact of life for every single person on this planet, it has been a constant struggle for me to accept in my own life- and probably always will be.  

I don't know why I am a glass-half-full sort of girl in every aspect of life except in regard to my own personal achievements/limitations but I don't like that about myself.  I tend to see the frozen apples on the tree, wasting away, instead of the jars on the counter.  Maybe it is a healthy way to stay humble and prevents a person from becoming stagnant in life...maybe it is a good thing.  I just wish it didn't feel so much like failing.  Is this a woman thing?  Is it a me thing?  Is it the outworking of humbleness or ingratitude?  Is it a good thing or a bad thing?  

I wonder...

The End of October

 

Our high-tech children on their new-to-them typewriter, listening to Dolly Parton or Bach or Scottish pipes on the new-to-them tape recorder. 

 

 

 

Penny had an interesting weekend.  You'll hear about that tomorrow.  It's befitting for a post all its own.

Mattie-made floor.

This bugger is one of the same that stung Corynn a few weeks ago picking apples- a fruit wasp.  For comparison, an ordinary bee sits on top of the lid. 

 

 

 October ending is spent bringing in wood and the last remaining garden things and apples to keep us warm and filled this winter.  It has been such a wonderful apple year; even with our three unhealthy trees we have had ample apples to sauce and dry and bake with and spice in apple butter.  Made all the more wonderful when we were unable to pick even a single apple the year before.  I am very thankful that there were a few apple trees here when we got here, especially since my plans for adding fruit trees this year never came to fruition.  Fruition, get it?

We've added layers of quilts to the beds and shivered as we scrambled in for quite some time and I have warmed the kitchen up by baking and canning when the house is cold, but we haven't started our woodstove yet this year.  Tomorrow morning, I think, we will start our first fire of the season.  Over the weekend Matt cleared some junk wood from around the place and burned it and I stood watching it blaze, feeling its heat and smelling that wonderful woody, smoky smell.  I breathed it in and wondered at how welcome that scent was to my nose, how I had missed it without realizing I had.   I gladly became a human rotisserie as I inched forward and let the fire heat me through and then rotated until my sides felt like they would burn and then my back and then my other side.  Over and over, there is nothing like the intense heat of a fire to warm your bones.

I realize that this will be the last of my homegrown flower bouquets and so I fill every nook with every remaining half-living petal that I can muster.  I will miss my flowers.  They had a good run.  A beautiful run.  The bees are lazy and lethargic, clinging on to petals- seemingly drunk on pollen.  I impressed the children when I picked one up with my fingers without it stinging me.  It just sleepily wondered at why it was moving but didn't care enough to fly.  Or sting.

The children are constantly running around with bare feet and wearing short sleeve shirts with no coats, even when it is downright cold outside, because that is what they have done all summer and old habits die hard.  I chase after each one with a hat and sweater many times a day and try to keep socks on their almost blue toesies before they take them off again, how odd they feel on their skin.

Matt, he is up to his usual mischief.  Once he re-sided the barn, well, then he had to go and cut a few holes back in it to make some doors.  And he used all the recently sawed lumber to rebuild the hay mow floor in the barn.  Finally, a place to store hay!  That, plus brush-hogging, re-siding the chicken coop, sorting logs, bringing in wood- he is has been such a hard worker.

Yes.  We are like squirrels, hurriedly running from here to there getting those last minute things done before we hole away for the winter.   I can't say I am looking forward to winter~ affection does not come easily to a season that freezes my bones and forces me to haul frozen water to frozen animals in frozen temperatures.  But I can say we've had a good run, Autumn and I.