Little Snake

Today D brought home a little friend.

Tommy is fascinated.

Golden Sunset

The colors this time of year (end of August) are so different from other season's colors.  So golden.

This photo is taken from the same place as the fog picture from the August morning..

Foggy Morning

This morning was foggy but bright.

The Autumn Bliss raspberries have been remarkable.

We have picked several quarts.  It makes wonderful juice.

Potato Harvest

We have had some delicious fresh potatoes - red ones (Sangre)for potato salad, (Yukon Gold) for salad and mashing, a new-to-us baking potato (Gold Rush) that was marvelous, and a darling fingerling (La Ratte) (boiled and buttered with parsley).

D has begun harvesting the potatoes for storage.  The tabletops and beds in the dark, spare bedroom are covered with drying potatoes.  But this one is special.

A manly potato.

Gooseberries

 Today we picked the last of the gooseberries.   We have a half-dozen bushes.  Picking is a bit annoying, since you have to pull each berry separately, then remove both the stem and blossom end.   Also, the berries do not ripen all at once, so you have to leave the green ones (except when they come off with the ripe ones!).

Here's a large cereal bowl of gooseberries.

You can see the stems and blossom ends that must be removed.

After cleaning the gooseberries, at Chris' recommendation, I treated them as I would blueberries for pie.

A bit of juice, cornstarch, Spenda.

Ready to eat!

Even Tinier Egg

There were seven eggs today.  

Including a surprise.  

Sitting in the nesting box with the big eggs, there was one tiny egg.

We assume it was laid by one the very young buff orpington chicks.

She was born in May!

The egg weighed 4 grams.

The two largest eggs in the bowl weighed 73 grams and 71 grams.

The tiny egg had a rubbery shell in parts, and it broke.  There was no yolk.

High Summer - Raspberries and Eggs

It's been sunny and warm.   D has been able to clear much of the brush from the front and side yards.

This is the fourth serious picking of raspberries.

We'll turn them into juice - there are now five pints in the freezer, plus we enjoy some every day.  (Not counting picking a handful to eat as we walk by.)

In May we bought six Buff Orpington chicks from Frog Pond.  One "disappeared".  The other five were adopted by one of the old hens, and she has done a fine job of raising them.  They are now about the size of Cornish Game Hens, so this was a surprise today.

A little, tiny egg!

Welcome to summer!

This is nicer than the destruction described in the last post.