A roundup of sorts

It's been strangely hard to find time to do any updates here since we moved. Ironically, as I type this, we're (most of us) up north -- where one would think I might be generating some more content to post. But it's raining, so maybe I can just catch up a bit.

First, the first day of the new school... it was also raining. Here we are making our way. Fun times...

You can click the picture for more exciting scenes of that morning.

Also that first week, our neighbor Maria offered (actually, practically begged) for us to come and pick grapes from her vines. She doesn't use them anymore. So we ended up with a lot of grapes. And so, here is Selena working her grape jelly magic.

At this step she is squeezing a bit more juice out of the grape pulp after they'd been draining through cheese cloth all night.

A bit of a story about the cheese cloth. I was sent out at a late hour to get some at the nearest big 24 hour grocery store. After searching and searching I could not find any, so I asked one of the cashiers if she knew where it was. She looked at me like I was crazy. "Cheese? Cloth?" she says. I try to explain what it is. She is baffled, and eventually calls over another young woman to consult. The new person at least admits she has heard of cheese cloth, but has never seen it. Well, at least here I had some support that the stuff exists in the world, and I'm not just a crazy old guy wandering around in the dark asking about nonsensical items. Cheese? Cloth? All they could do was direct me to the isles I'd already looked in. It wasn't there.

What's this world coming to?! The young people no longer know the cheese cloth! And this particular grocery store did not seem to have any.

When I got back it turned out we already had some after all. We just hadn't looked hard enough.

Anyhow, on the topic of fruit, we also went to check out a local pick-your-own orchard.

Many of the trees were a bit different at this orchard that others we've been to. They are bigger, older trees; but they've been pruned to grow downward. They look a bit like upside down trees. (The apples on them were also a bit unnervingly huge.)

Again here, click the image for more apple picking pictures.