More Harvest

One of my recent goals for this blog is to record happenings in the garden and yard that I might check back in future years to see what was done when.  Many days are like the previous ones and there's not much to write.  Plants grow and bloom slowly for the most part and then all of a sudden they reach a notable stage.  In late summer and fall that would be maturity and harvest.

The pear tree look so good.  There are full yellow pears hanging throughout the old tree.  The younger tree with its multi-varieties also has full branches with gorgeous looking fruit, some pear shaped and some oriental types that are apple shaped.  We use the criteria that if you life a fruit up to one side and it snaps off, it's ready.  These are not ready, maybe next week.

We were hoping the front, as opposed to the back, apple tree would wait another week or so but every day there are more apples on the ground and picking them from the tree is very easy.  Yesterday I picked 10 gallons.  The back tree, as opposed to the front, is quite ready so we'll do that one next week.

This morning I picked the last of the pole beans which amounted to a large handful.  Then I turned to the grapes by the greenhouse.  At first I was going to selectively pick the ripe sweet ones but as I worked around during just the first few minutes I realized they were all ready because they kept falling to the ground.  During the course of the day I picked about 16 bowls full which became about 6 gallons of juice.  Most of the juice was canned into 21 quarts and the remaining sits in a pitcher in the refrigerator for immediate consumption.

Since we're traveling over the weekend, this will be the last of the harvesting this week, actually this month.  The other grapes in the tresseled arbor on the hillside are small, hard and very bitter--not ripe or ready.

The weather was  awesome--mild, clear about mid seventies.  The forecast is for several days of light rain but I'm skeptical.  We need it so badly.

Oh, yeah, and there were the blackberries that I picked from a patch that I intend to destroy later this fall.  I would have destroyed it now but there were berries that would ripen later this fall.  We put them on a cookie sheet to freeze them and today I bagged them--one gallon.