Dressing Preparedly

This past weekend, the grandkids and their mother were here for Saturday evening and thru Sunday afternoon. We actually made it to church Sunday morning -surprise, surprise that I woke up in time to be able to get dressed and attend to some of the morning routines that are necessary for me to do before getting on with my day. That, my friends, for me can be a minor miracle!

Sunday afternoon though, be darned if I can remember where Mandy went but the kids and I took the dog for a walk and took some plastic bags along with us so that maybe -with two helpers in tow- it would give me a chance to get some of the apples I've been watching develop for over the past 2 months or so and which now are nice and red, ready for the picking.

Well, first thing we had to do when we got down by the trees that produce these really good cooking apples was to figure out a way to sort of tie Sammy up so he wouldn't take off and pester the neighborhood, thus getting me in trouble then with the dog law officer, ya know.

So what I did was to loop the handle part of his leash over a roadside sign -the upper part of it -and that gave him plenty of lead to stroll around in the grass along the side of the road and still be close enough to the kids and me that he wouldn't start to cry or howl, thinking he was being left behind.

Then I gave Maya and Kurt instructions that I would take this big piece of dead  branch I found in the woods by the road and try to hit at the branches where the apples were most plentiful and they -Maya and Kurt -would be in charge of "chasing" down the apples and putting them in the bags we'd brought with us.

Good idea in theory except Maya refused completely to walk out into the grass under the trees as she couldn't see what was under the grass (which was a bit longer than she is used to in our yard) and besides, she had her flip-flops on and they wouldn't protect her feet to do something like that. So, Maya was put in charge then of holding the bag and trying to help give Kurtis directions as to where the apples had landed on the ground that I (Grammy) had knocked down from the tree! Good plan in theory except that I forgot following directions of that type definitely is not one of Kurt's strong points.

It too a while to accrue enough apples to have made our venture worthwhile but finally we went home with about 30 nice little cooking apples for me to peel later Sunday night and cook up into a decent sized batch of applesauce which I plan to bag in quart-sized zip lock baggies and then freeze for use this winter!

Nice way to set some good, slightly warmed up applesauce on the table with a meal that way and very inexpensive then too!

Well, later Sunday afternoon, I got my son to come down with his truck and go do to those apple trees again because to reach the really nice, bigger apples and knock them down, I needed a few more inches of height on me and I figured if it hadn't happened in the past  69 years, a growth spurt sure as heck wasn't about to show up in me now!

Well, if we didn't look a sight though with him standing on the bed of his truck -all 6 ft 2 inches of him -holding on to this branch I'd found and swatting crazily at the tree branches to send a bunch of apples flying off into the high grass beneath the tree for me to go and root and pick up the apples and put them into another plastic bag to take home.

We did manage to get a few more apples that I got earlier and once home, I counted 'em and there were 50 apples in the container for me to peel and cook down into more applesauce.

Last night, I did that but only got 25 of the apples peeled and cooked up. The other 25 apples are going to have to wait a day or two for me to get to making applesauce with them as I have a bunch of other things that I have to get done first.

And tonight, my neighbor down at the end of the road stopped by and dropped off two nice sized buckets of apples from the Red Delicious apple trees she has in her back yard and these babies were larger -much larger -than those from the other trees Clayton and the kids and I had raided. So now, I have probably 50-60 MORE apples to peel and cook up, just waiting for me to get the time needed to do that.

If this keeps up though, all this cleaning, peeling, cooking, etc., with these apples, I may have to invest in some protective clothing to wear while gathering and then getting the apples all cooked up. Maybe something like a pair of tyvek coveralls would be a wise investment for doing chores like that.

Although, if we had something like that to wear -especially my son -and with him standing on the bed of his pickup truck swinging a big tree branch at a tree, I'm thinking some passersby might get scared and think it was some invader from outer space come to earth to steal apples! Cause boy, as tall and skinny as my son is in coveralls all white like those are, he sure could look that part I think!