This week has been incredible! Beautiful sunshine, renewed energy, and up until today, an almost pain-free knee! I have taken every opportunity to be outside soaking up the Ds, and being productive in the garden. On Monday, I cleaned the oven!! Well not exactly, since, of course, nowadays, they clean themselves. It was exciting because it was the first time I'd ever cleaned this one, and now it's all clean and shiny. On Tuesday, I tootled up to Holland to pick blueberries at the Lionel Fortin patch, and, although the bushes looked pretty picked over, I lay down under the bushes to find them beautifully laden. I picked 6 quarts, and a basketful of early yellow apples, some late raspberries, and Lionel threw in an heritage tomato and others and a couple of cucumbers, which was just fine since Moses has pulled up and eaten all the cucumber plants! When I returned home, I froze 6 quarts of blueberries and 2 quarts of applesauce! I dined on tomatoes and cucumbers and salad greens. So begins my most favourite time of the year: bringing in the harvest and laying it up for the winter months; jam making; bread making; knitting and spinning. Here's a lovely photograph of Lionel helping to fill my basket! He and his wife, Simone, are the very salt of the earth.
