🍎🍏 Update

 We picked for three straight days. Exhausting work. We started juicing on Thursday and produced a whopping record-high 39 gallons in one day. 

We have had some great helpers: 

Pam C came 3 days, Jim H, Cindy W came twice, Nancy J (twice), Madi R. Gail and Jonny came to our rescue and helped two days. Ray and Twila came Saturday. All over a few days span. Mike overdid it on Thursday/Friday and took Saturday off to "just" deliver juice and watch the BYU football game. 

Monday was a bit slower, as Mike was still not up to snuff, but DID get a chiropractic adjustment that helped a lot. I spent some time between helpers to get my (mostly green) tomatoes picked and the vines, stakes and cages all pulled up. That was hard. I now have lots of green tomatoes in the garage, ripening. It was still warm and windy Monday.

But then today, Tuesday Oct 29 (Kaylee's birthday!), it snowed ALL DAY LONG. Not a lot, but it sprinkled a lot of water out of the sky. So we BOTH took the day off. I got to spend time with Mom, give her a haircut, eat lunch with her, we shopped at Smith's and got some great-grandchild photos ordered and picked up ( but forgot to leave them with her☹️) Mike got some deliveries of cider done and we BOTH had a much- needed nap. We are old and we are tired. 

Pretty fall colors. It's stunning in the sun, but we saw no sun today. 

2 or more inches of snow on Tuesday morning. Brrr .

But, I still have about 30 boxes of apples in my garage. They seem to multiply, because I SWEAR I have cut up thousands of fruit already.  It should have made a substantial dent in the amount. And I have terrible dish-pan hands from washing everything from apples to strainers to pitchers, floors, , table tops, cutting boards, rags, trays, bowls....

Did I tell you that Mike changed methods of pressing juice yet again? It's an evolving process for sure.

115 gallons produced over 4 working days.

Mike's pleased. I'm exhausted .

Halloween Day. I sorted the apples left in the garage. Mike's pressed about 140 gallons and we STILL have this many left. Crazy!!!!!

We get a little break, as Mike has to manufacture and purchase some more parts for the press because he was borrowing Jason's basin and lumber and trays and straining cloths. I think Mike thought we'd be done before Jason needed it back. We should have been done.

 Final count for apple cider produced this season? 203 gallons. I think we have ( as of November 18) about 40 gallons left in our freezer. Mike has delivered many and we've drank a lot, shared a lot....

This time, I got it in writing 😆

🍎🍏🍎🍏Apples🍎🍏🍎🍏

 

I picked this many apples off of my backyard Jonathan Apple tree. Yummy. That is the equivalent of 13 five-gallon buckets. And there's still more on the tree! Probably four or so buckets? I'm not sure, but I think I'll leave them there for a while. 

Mike and I have picked for two days. We only have a half a garage full. Ha. Nice variety, but too many that are wormy ( mine are NOT wormy!). 

We are getting closer. We need some more golden delicious and red delicious and some more of a tart variety, though we do have many gallons of frozen more tart ones from the early windfalls I picked up and juiced...and from the Heaton's tree that Mike picked. That will be added to our Mix as well 

So many apples. But not everywhere. Some areas of New Harmony did NOT get fruit this year, sadly.

The OTHER half of the garage. More picking tomorrow!

Wednesday update: this many from Sam's tree.  JUST Sam's!! About 14 1/2  buckets full. I sprayed his tree every time I sprayed mine. He said it was his best crop ever. I'm so glad they came out and picked apples with us. We could have never done it on our own. His wife climbed a very tall ladder to the garage roof and picked; Sam climbed the tree itself. Like a monkey.  It's big, old and has some nasty dead branches and twigs, one of which ripped a hole in my shirt!

Fall, before the snow

 It took until October, but the geraniums on the front porch flower bed FINALLY bloomed. In all fairness, they ARE in the shade for nearly the entire day.  I guess they really DO need sunshine to be happy!

We are having a bit of a hailstorm and some rain, complete with Thunder and Lightening! We have not had any measurable rain in a very long time.

We are expecting a freeze tonight, and since I have so many green tomatoes in the garden, we decided to cover up the plants we have left.  A few pepper plants and a few tomato plants are out there, under tarps. Ugh. Water + dirt = Mud. That is going to be a big mess when we go out there next!

Mike and I went to the St. George Temple this afternoon. The Cedar City Temple is closed for a two-week cleaning, so we went down there. He did names for Initiatory and I went through an Endowment session.  Mike still can't reach comfortably behind him to tie on ceremonial clothing when he attends, so he skipped the endowment session.  We were married there, as were most of our kiddos. I was endowed there. It looks so very different now.  They restored it to what it might have looked like in the 1800's, I suppose.  But it was nice.  We stopped for ice cream on the way home.

After we got home, I hurried over to the Heaton's garden.  They, too, are preparing for a freeze, and had many unused ripe tomatoes.  So I picked a small bucket of them so I'd have enough to add to mine for a batch of tomato juice tomorrow. I seldom have enough to do a whole batch, so this will help a lot. Only I'll have to go buy some onions and carrots at the store for my V-8 juice. . . which is actually V-6, because the "Garden Vegetable Blend" juice recipe I use only has SIX vegetables in it, not 8. Tomatoes, onions, peppers, carrots, celery and parsley. I guess I could add a beet and another herb and make it be V-8, but V-6 is good enough for me. It's pretty tasty.

Tonight was our Adult Religion class at the institute at 7 pm. So Mike and I went to that, too. We really enjoy listening to Kevin Bulloch teach. He is a master teacher.  They drove home to Cedar City from Gilbert Arizona today. They'd been there staying with Grandchildren. That's a long drive. I noticed that Kevin was leaning across the pulpit quite a bit, as though his back ached. I'm guessing it probably did! Plus, he was trying to get closer to a microphone that wasn't working. At all. But we could hear him quite fine.  Funny thing is--he cannot hear US!  He really can't hear well anymore. I don't know if he wears hearing aids or not, but he misses a lot of class comments. One time, he just was not getting it AT ALL. We were kind of playing a fun, participatory game but he couldn't tell what we were saying to him. After about 6 different people trying to convey our message, I finally ran up to the podium to TELL him to his face, loudly and clearly. I didn't want him to miss what we were ALL saying, poor guy. So then he had NaNon, his wife, come up to interpret the comments for him during that game segment.

So, it was a busy day!  Add to that taking Mom to the Diabetes doctor, it was plenty full. 

Mom's dr said she is doing well. Here's a photo of the graph from her Continual Glucose Monitor over the past two weeks. 

 

She's in a pretty good range most of the time, but where the high peaks were, I think were from stress from her new medicine (Lyrica for Nerve Pain) and the fogginess that she's had as a result. Medications come with tradeoffs--Pain or Foggy head?  I think she's choosing to have a foggy brain rather than pain. She felt pretty good on Tuesday, and today after the dr appointment, we went for a drive up the canyon to see the fall leaves. We went as far as Woods Ranch. Most of the leaves have turned and fallen. They were not at their peak, but it was a nice drive anyway. We had Burger King for lunch on the drive, too.  Temps are definetely dropping!

I had some backyard garden time here in the morning, too. And I made us a lovely fritatta with some of the Swiss chard I grew. They ONLY Swiss chard I grew!  One meal. Hopefully it'll come back next year and do better. I cleaned out the front flower pots that had lilies in them. I just pulled out the dead stems, readying them for winter. I hope they come back next year!

Here's the full Harvest Moon coming up over the neighbor's house.  So pretty. Wish my camera would focus on it and show what it really looked like.  (I think the comet makes up for it.)

Comet

 I don't remember the name. It's long. But this is only seen once every 80,000 years( really? Who could possibly KNOW that?!?!)

But we found it! 

We drove out west and waited and watched. I got a photo. It's very faint, but it's there!

C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) ☄️ 

Then I came home it was positioned perfectly between houses and trees, so I got a better photo! So cool .

Mike and I had friends over for dinner tonight. A new member in our ward, and his wife. They are in their early 60's , perhaps late 50"s. Talk about a hard knock life. Both of them. But they are on good paths now. Many years of sobriety now between the two of them. But, I practically pushed them out the door in order for me and Mike to take our drive to find the comet! To be fair, we did first offer to take them for a ride with us,'West'. To get a better view of the horizon. They declined. 

I'm a nerd. I thought it was great to find it AND get a photo. Especially since my phone was almost dead.

I spent my ENTIRE  day in the kitchen. I DO love my kitchen. And it's a good thing.

I made:

One big apple pie with good home made crust. 

One batch of jalapeno corn bread. 

One BIG bowl of cole Slaw. I have SOOOOO much cabbage. 

One batch 8 pints of bottled salsa. 

One batch  4 1/2 quarts of bottled applesauce. (I left the peelings on this time... I won't do that again. ) ]

Heavenly halibut. 

Green beans. 

Sliced tomatoes. It was a really good dinner.

And we are stuffed. Nearly all from the garden, too!!

2024 St. George Marathon. SWOOSH!

 Damian ran the whole marathon, not just the half as originally planned. And he did it without Don, as he was injured at the last minute. Weight-lifting incident. 

I decided last minute to go watch him finish. Saturday , October 5, 2024. I tracked him on the app. I even helped another person track THEIR runner while waiting since she didn't have cell service.

And then I missed him! I thought I saw him, but it wasn't him... And then I didn't understand the app...it said he'd finished. But how? It wasn't time.

He sprinted the last few blocks, passing about 100 people ( including one cardiac arrest victim!)! When it looked like he was close on the app,  I approached the fence, I watched on tippy- toes, I didn't see him. Then my phone's camera kept turning off during the wait, so I did a practice video. 

AND HE SWOOSHED BY SO FAST I DIDN'T EVEN SEE HIM!

But my camera caught him. So glad I checked it before deleting the "practice" video. Go, Damian!

I have the video, buts its too long to put on my blog. Tell me how to edit it and I'll put in a clip of just him so you can see how FAST he was. It totally messed with the Marathon app algorithm. Ha!