Pete & Teri’s Next Big Adventure

Yes, it’s another post of organically grown eye candy =)

I’ll work from the North end of the property, where the Orchard is, toward the garden in the South.

Some would say I do it this way because I’m a Capricorn, but I’m way too much of a typical Capricorn to give credence to astrology.

There are about half a dozen apple trees around the property, and they’re getting heavier every day:

Multicolored tassels on the multicolored corn should lead to multicolored kernals:

The flowers have calmed down a bit in anticipation of the end of summer, but there’s hardly a shortage:

We’ve probably got 2/3 of the wood we’ll need to get through the winter now…about half of that waiting to be split. It’s a good feeling; our fuel for the winter is tangible, visible. We’ll be warm regardless of how everyone’s business is going.

We’ve been working on new habits, to reduce the rate at which we gobble up the earth’s resources. Here are plastic bags washed and drying, to be used again at the market, for leftovers, etc.

I really need to learn all I can about preserving apples in the coming weeks!

This pear tree has only a few pears, but they look and smell so goooooood:

Teri’s friend theorized that this might be buckwheat or a relative…it just popped up in a container of lettuce and corn I had planted:

We let whole row of radishes go to seed, and eventually they produce these pods with a few seeds in each. We are now set on radish seeds for next year…err…possibly for several years.

Pumpkin plant – started them a bit late, hope the gentle climate out here lets them live long enough.

The older flowers are heavy with seeds, and it’s still producing more. I think I’ll be saving these seeds for planting next year.

The tobacco plants are finally taking off

Sweet corn is tasseling…

…and silking (tassels are the male flower on top, silk is the female flower where the cob will grow.)

There are about to be a zillion cherry tomatoes. We’ve eaten a few already; all store-bought tomatoes, even from organic-fancy-expensive health food stores, pale in comparison.

Another “lifetime supply” thing…We’ve got about half a dozen hot pepper plants of different kinds, all putting out fruit now and all very potent.

We have a lot of wasps and hornets around here, but except for one incident where the landlord ran a nest over with the lawnmower, no “attacks”. I feel that we have a good live-and-let-live relationship with them and see each other as part of the natural environment and nothing to panic about – but then again, so did Grizzly Man.

Saw this nest being built on the shed, and managed to get the camera lens about 3″ away from them, at which point they stopped working and all turned to look in my direction. I took this as a sign that the photo shoot was at an end.

Early today, working on NYC time, I was on a conference call discussing a long list of complicated security upgrades to a client’s website; this soon after my coffee, it was difficult. I paced around the yard while I talked, as is my habit, and heard a tapping on the window.

Teri was there, making chicken-dance sort of gestures and pointing out to the orchard behind me. I looked for a moment, but started losing track of the fascinating discussion of SQL injection prevention and SSL certificate implementation and had to wave a “later” to her.

Once I was off the call, Teri told me that the wild turkeys were back in our yard – we’ve spotted them almost every morning, but never managed to get close enough to photograph them. There are several adults, and a bunch of babies that I can usually only detect by their effect on the tall grasses. Finally got some photos of the adults, unlikely-looking creatures that our neighbor aptly describes as “flying bowling balls”:

Look at the photo and you’ll see it.

Yes, that’s right, the steel pole behind the deer! That pole means that we now have more-or-less high speed internet access with a satellite system from Wild Blue. Saves me a 30-50 mile commute every day, and now when people send me photos of their kids I can actually go “awwww”, instead of cursing them for making my email retrieval timeout =)

Yeah, the deer is pretty too.