9-11-14 Life

Beautiful Sunday morning -

Routine Monday -

Beautiful Monday evening -

Feeding grasshoppers and wooly bears to the fish -

Routine Tuesday -

26# -

That’s it for now.

9-10-14 Timber Ridge Ice Cream Social

Happy Birthday, Lydian!

9-9-14 CatchUp

by Kate

We have done a terrible job blogging lately so here is a quick post.

Tuesday evening Ben and I went down to the pond and went fishing. The bass have grown a lot.

I think this was probably Jewel taking these pictures. These are Josh’s four favorite cats. Tab Sister, Smiley, Orangey, and Bugs (Buggy Bumpers).

The two biggest potatoes.

The other one weighed 3# 3oz!

The cats love coming in the house while the window are being washed.

One of the frequent rains.

There were only about a dozen pictures of these cats on the camera but this was the only one that was saved.

                                                                                                  THE END.

9-8-14 The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

For the record.

First the good - - - -

GrandGala look good, smell good, taste good.

 

Fuji look good, smell good. They’re pretty tart yet, but in a month or so they’ll be tasting pretty fine, I’m thinking.

Not sure why I didn’t take px of Yellow & Red Delicious, but they’re coming along just fine too.

Now for the bad - - - -

Nothing new here, I just wanted a picture for the record. Maybe a dozen peaches this year: mostly empty trees.

And - - the ugly - - - -

Yeah.

These two formerly gorgeous RedHaven trees didn’t survive the harsh winter. These are slated to be cut down soon. I don’t think I can watch.

Here’s the history. For five years we pruned them and mowed around them. The next year we had a sprinkling of peaches, a good start. The next two years we had late frosts which killed all the buds: nothing. 2013 was great. Maybe five bushels each? More? Ten maybe? Loaded. Delicious.  Remember, the one closest actually broke because we didn’t prop it good enough; we lost about three bushels from that deal but the rest still finished out beautifully.

Lesson: IL is hard on peach trees. If you’re going to try peach trees, plant them on the highest possible plane. We won’t re-plant peach trees here, but we’ve started a nice bunch south of the house which is actually higher ground than this; hopefully we won’t lose anymore peach trees even if we have another harsh winter like last.

That’s it!

9-4-14 Labor Day Weekend

Saturday evening -

Sunday afternoon -

Monday -