A Good Apple Year

Here are three of the apple trees in our large backyard deck, all blossoming to beat the band!  It looks as if it will be a good apple year here.  The tree to the left is an old crab apple that was here on the place when we moved here in '99.  Those apples make very nice apple sauce if you wait until the frost has gone over them.  Farther back in the centre is a Dolgo crab apple.  They are somewhat oval, small and very red.  They also made a good sauce, but it's quite tart.  The tree to the right is a Kerr apple/crab.

Here's a close up of some of the Kerr blossoms.  Aren't they beautiful!  This tree fruits every other year.  On the in-between-years it produces just a few apples.  This year a good crop is due.  These apples make beautiful juice--clear and deep pink.  I'm pretty sure I've posted pictures of several quarts of just canned Kerr apple juice.

I use a steam juicer for most of my juicing.  It produces "steaming" hot clear juice, about four quarts for each full load of fruit.  I can drain the juice directly from the juicer into the sterile jar, top it with a lid, and because it's so hot, it will soon seal itself.

It's not a good year for asparagus, though.  We usually eat asparagus every other day for quite a few weeks in the spring.  This year the stalks are few and skinny.  Many are too tough to eat.  I think it was just too dry the end of last summer and into this spring.

You know those nice hand knit socks I sent to my Sis for her birthday?  They were too big, but they didn't go to waste.  They fit her husband and he loves them, so they became a present for him.

On Saturday evening I started a new pair for Sis.  They are knitting up extraordinarily fast.  It's an easy pattern from Knitty.com that is called "Broadripple" after an area in Indianapolis that I visited as a child.  We had cousins living there, and I especially remember the sportsplex with an indoor swimming pool.

I used this pattern once before, but they turned out so small I had to give them away to someone with daintier feet than I have (good Dutch 10 1/2's, or European 42s).  So I added a few stitches here and there to the pattern, and they're turning out very well.  I've actually gotten quite far up the leg since I took this picture this morning.  The yarn is from Mary Maxim, Aloe Sock Yarn, the colour is "Desert Sky."  It's a fun knit!

Tomorrow morning I'm flying to Ontario to be there for #1 Granddaughter's graduation with a four year nursing degree.  I'm looking forward to having a good visit there with DD#1, DGD#1 and DGS#2.  Don't know if I'll be posting at all while I'm there, so I'll see you in a little over a week.