I apologize for the lapse in blogging. It's the whole buying a house, going to a family reunion, painting, flooring, moving...all in the span of two weeks. It'll really take it out of a person. But now we're well-settled into our new house and we have time to breathe occasionally. We also have wireless internet in the house now, so our "old" computer, the one with my beloved Photoshop, is connected to the internet on a regular basis. So blogosphere, watch out! I'm back.
As I may have mentioned in May, when I last blogged, we have a beautiful, very large yard at our new house. It is full of fruit trees and vines and canes and bushes. Almost any form fruit can grow in, we have it. And it is all starting to ripen now. Even though it's been a very foggy late July and August, the fruit is doing well. Today, we finally had sunshine, so I expect to be harvesting over the weekend.
We have several apple trees, with two bearing heavy loads of fruit. I was told that some are baking apples and some eating apples. We'll see as they get ripe. I'm looking forward to both! Apple pies. Apple butter. Apple crisp. Apple snacks.
I need a ladder to harvest these blackberries climing up our holly!
Kiwis! We have kiwis! Real fuzzy ones, too, not the smooth-skinned, yellow-fleshed kiwis. These are the real deal and our vines climb at least 25 feet into the air, with scores of the fuzzy beasts. When they were true babies, their fuzz was quite red and they were beautiful.
Darcy's already done some harvesting. She was so proud. Here she is reaching up to test some beautiful...
...peaches! We've already eaten two of our very own peaches, but none were ready for picking on this day. After all our sunshine this afternoon, I'm counting on three or four of them being ready this weekend. We don't have tons of peaches, but we have a couple dozen, at least. I've been told this is a bad year for fruit trees in the area because we had some late, frenzied storms that damaged a lot of blossoms.
You really should come visit.
Ah, banana slug courtship rituals. So beautiful. I just wish they weren't on my house.
This is a very big banana slug. Even for banana slugs around here, it's pretty big. Just so you know that I'm not being hysterical about this, I took some pictures for scale, too.
See? It looks big next to Darcy! Who loved it, of course, and tickled it with her tickle-grass. It retracted its antennae, much to her delight.
It's even big next to Michael's head! Isn't it nice how we include the very big slug in family games? We're very hospitable to them. I don't love them, but since "we're completely surrounded by slugs", as Darcy trilled happily this morning during her pre-departure slug survey, I'm trying to get used to their company.
