Traveling

We've been on vacation. Just back from Vietnam.

Apples

I picked my bumper crop of backyard apples last weekend. There were about 5 pounds and they were nearly perfect, nary a worm. I've been eating them all week and they have a delicious crunch and tart flavor. Can't wait for more next year!

Happy Halloween

We missed the costume parties this year but we didn't miss out on the pumpkin carving.

Our neighbors, Chelsy and Cyndi stopped by on Saturday night to share in carving up these jack-o-lanterns.

Open/Closed

Well, it was a big weekend for our friends Michelle and Ryan...they moved into their new house. With that event, we moved out all of the odds and ends that we'd been storing for them for the last few months. We've got the real estate in our garage and NW corner of our basement back...and that means a project!

Lowes sent us a coupon this week--just what we'd been waiting for to buy a garage door opener. It was the perfect excuse for Justin to spend 10 hours in the garage alone. I helped with one step requiring two people but for the most part, this was a Justin project. His reward for his effort is the treat of parking in there. 

Too bad snapshots can't capture movement...the door was headed up for my first trial run of the new gadget.

Justin spend a few hours tidying up the garage so it would fit a car...he's got some new organization for ladders and sawhorses as well as his drill press.

Drainage

There was a whole lot of hole digging going on this mid-September. Remember last year when we had some torrential rain and our basement sprung a leak? Well, we hope we have solved this problem by re-routing the downspout. Justin did most of the trenching but I covered about 5 feet while he rested up.

Just getting started, only 40 more feet to go!

The good news is that it's been raining quite a bit in the last 48 hours and our basement is dry as a bone. It's still to early to declare victory but this is definitely a good start.

Can-stravaganza

Well, it's that time again! Time to fill the larder and get ready for a long winter of soups and stews and the occasional pizza with homemade sauce.

My friend Jen and I invested in 75 pounds of tomatoes and put up 34 quarts for our respective pantries. And Jen couldn't get enough and canned another 9 quarts of dill pickles in the same afternoon. And then I couldn't get enough and picked a peck of wild blackberries--the kind that grow in ever neglected patch of land in the Northwest--and turned them into jam for my Sunday morning amusement.

Super-canners extraordinaire: Laura & Jen.

Another angle to get an idea of the magnitude.

I had to break out the bacon for my first BLT of the season. That tomato beauty is home-grown--weighing in around 2 pounds.

Five pints of blackberry jam. It's extra delicious because it is seedless.

So far this year, I've done peach, plum and blackberry jam, sliced peaches, dill and sweet pickles, sweet relish, dilly beans and tomatoes. I've nearly exhausted my supply of jars...although I think I have enough to make a batch of jelly from the grapes growing all over the foreclosed home next door. And, if I come upon a abundance of something, I might just have to locate some more jars.