I dug the shallots
Shallots are quite frugal, if you garden. You buy them once, plant them in the fall, dig them next summer, set some aside and plant those for next harvest, then you get to cook with the rest. This batch, here, I began 15 years ago with one dozen purchased shallot bulbs. I try to plant the very largest ones of the harvest. The rest I keep in a small bowl on the counter and use them in cooking and salad dressings.
I washed the throws for the family room
We keep several throws stacked and ready for anyone feeling the chill. They're flannel on the inside and corduroy on the outside. These I made about 10 years ago. My machine was on the fritz that year, so did these just with hand-sewing, and they, honestly, did not take longer than a couple of hours each to make.
I've been picking herbs
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| some sage and a handful of rosemary ready to dry |
I only have about a 4 month supply of oregano so far. But I think I can get one more cutting and make that a 6 month supply, not quite enough to get us to next May, when we should have something for culinary use again. So, I'll have to improvise. I'm cutting extra sage, thyme, and rosemary for drying, and will just have to make do in my cooking.
Chris and I picked the pears from the early tree
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| we picked about 15 pounds of pears this weekend |
We have two bearing pear trees, one early, one late. We harvested the early this weekend. This used to be just my job, but the tree has grown so tall and was so prolific, I needed assistance. We took turns climbing the ladder, then reached the point where we could no longer grab any pears. Pear branches are quite brittle, and bending them over to pick, often results in branch breakage (I found out the hard way once).
The two of us were a comical pair. At one point we had two ladders about 5 feet apart and I was practically hanging from a branch while my son was on the other ladder trying to jump to grab a pear. Clearly this was dangerous, and if we weren't careful, some sense would be knocked into our heads, by a very nasty fall. Chris, the voice of reason in our house, suggested that we needed a tool. I was eager to accept his suggestion, and off the two of us went in search of something to use for said tool.
We found an extension pole with a screen on one end (used to scoop leaves out of pools and ponds). To this we duct taped a plastic shopping bag, with the idea of scooping pears right into the bag and gently pulling them from the branch. Brilliant, right? We'd just sweep those pears into the bag and our work would be done in no time. No go. All the pears were getting knocked to the ground and damaged.
Back into the house we tromped, but not defeated. And there on the counter was my coffee cup from church earlier (which I had so untidily just left on the counter, shame on me!). Light bulb -- click!
We duct taped the cup to the other end of the extension pole, and looped an inside-out piece of duct tape to tuck into the cup, to catch and hold the pear.
Standing on a shaking ladder, and with an upward motion, I scooped the pears, one by one into this cup, and pushed up on the pear until it broke from the branch. Then very carefully lowered the cup, so I could retrieve the pear and hand it to Chris. One by one we cleaned the branches of ripe pears with our handy dandy tool. Not a single pear fell.
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| patent number 82,999,483,816,777,346,278,906,345,092 is pending |
And the best part is, I wanted to buy a fruit picking tool from Home Depot, if you go here, you'll see the fruit picker that I had my eye on for $39.95 plus tax. Our fruit picker cost about 15 cents in duct tape, total! I'll be using this again in October when it's time to harvest the other pear tree. And I'll give it a try on the apple trees as well and see if my "pear picker" is multi-purpose. I'll be applying for my patent on the duct tape/coffee cup contraption in the morning. So don't you get any ideas of bringing this to market first!
Oh, and as an aside, the neighbor across the street phoned me later and said she and her husband were watching us for about 30 minutes. They had a rip-roaring good laugh over our pear picking misadventures.
That's how far I've gotten in my endeavors to ready ourselves for autumn. Do you do anything in particular to ready your home and selves for autumn?
