We had to go to Lowe’s to return refrigerator filters (I gave Lowe’s guy our fridge model # & he told us the wrong one - grrrr). Once that was taken care of, we were off to the orchard for peaches - yay!
The Orchard Market Hours on the website are Mon - Sat 9-5. They were closed ... booo, hiss. Really irritating. I sent them an email about it.
We stopped at a place that supposedly has local produce, in fact they are sort of ‘famous’ for what they carry during ‘the season’. I could not believe what I was seeing. The tomatoes looked great, but the peaches were half rotten (no joke) for $2.99/lb. The cantaloupes were so bad, mom couldn’t find a single one she would spend money on. We won’t be back - it’s over the mountain to go there. Hopefully, we can find better closer to home.
On to Walmart where peaches are $1.22 .....EACH. I was dreaming of peach chutney, peach cobbler & peach bourbon upside-down Bundt cake. What a let down.
Frog strangler deluge while at Walmart. I got very wet getting to the car & I waited, along with a lot of other people, until it looked like the rain had slowed down - as soon as we were dashing for our cars, it picked up again. At least when I got home, we didn’t have a puddle of water on the floor - not sure why not since we have that pretty serious roof leak. The new roof can’t come soon enough!
Our Rose of Sharon bushes have shipped :-)
Sorry you didn’t have better Peach Luck, today!
Beau ‘inspected’ our peach tree today and is calling it a total crop failure. They went straight to ROT without even ripening! Too much rain, not enough sun, too much heat (even without sun; Thanks, Canada Wildfires!) and too much humidity.
I’ll get another good crop from her next year, I’m sure. Seems every OTHER year works out fine for ‘Miss Peach.’ I’ve still got Peach Butter and Peach Salsa in the larder.
Pears are ready to pick tomorrow (two trees, ‘Clapp’s Favorite’) and I’ll be making Peach Butter and Beau wants to break out the dehydrator for dehydrated pears, which is fine with me. Those can be added to yogurt or cottage cheese, used as a pancake syrup (with water to re-hydrate and cooked down a bit) or just eaten as a snack.
This evening there are a ZILLION (at least!) Dragonflies cruising around eating mosquitoes, as well as dozens of Barn Swallows doing the same.
I did battle with Wasps this afternoon - they have built nests in both the smoker and one of the grills, as well as BELOW the deck (that we just re-stained last year!) and they were coming in and out in the small openings between the deck boards. The can of spray (I already used one!) is on Beau’s La-Z-Boy so he remembers to go out and spray those @#$%^&*!-’ers again when they settle in for the evening...and before HE gets to! Supposedly, they are ‘pollinators’ but in my opinion...WHAT was God thinking?!?!? Let’s make an EVIL SOB that ruins outdoor Summer Fun? And comes AT YOU like a Bat out of H#ll when you accidentally stumble upon them? Yeah. Thanks. Not.
I wish we used our back deck more - we just don’t. We are ‘Front Porch People’, it seems. It’s got me thinking about having a Four Season Room out there; it would double the size of the Family Room and the cats and (lots of!) houseplants would like it as much as I would. ;)