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.

Some of Summer's Last Adventures

This last week of summer holidays, we took another crack at Burrows Lake; this time with the kids. We pulled the kids behind the canoe in a dinghy. We didn't paddle all that far, so it worked out all right. We stopped the lake's biggest island for a picnic and a swim.

(Also we ended up taking away an extra garbage bag full of refuse left by less considerate visitors to the island. Mostly beer cans, but also other trash... and even an old pair of socks. Humans, it seems, are the animals whose leavings can be sharp and nasty and do not decompose in a timely manner.)

You can see all the pics (of this week, so far) here.

Near the beginning of the summer, Emeth, for reasons yet inexplicable, announced that he wanted his summer project to be to make his own soap. Okaaaaay? We somehow haven't managed that, yet. But this week we did manage to hook up with a small town soap maker we'd met years before at a farmer's market, and she graciously volunteered to let us come and see her soap making process with the kids. The kids got to pick out a bar of soap for themselves each. Emeth got pumpkin pie soap. Istra went for Blueberry soap. Mommy couldn't leave without about a half dozen assorted bars, naturally.

And, once again, we hit the Uhthoff (rail) Trail, scavenging for semi-wild apples. Last year was tough, most of the trees did not produce apples. This year, the apples are back! But, most of the trees were not ripe yet. We did find a couple of trees with ripe-enough fruit to snag a grocery bag full without much effort, however. I sense a giant apple crisp hovering over us in the near future....

So that's what we've been up to this week so far. There's still a few days left. Who knows what's still in store...