Water, water everywhere

Water, water everywhere, and not a drop from the sky. This fall your most important tool is your hose.  1.  Water anything that you want to keep.  I will be watering my apple trees, my cherry tree, my grapevine, and my perennials.  I am also watering sections of the lawn.  Trees need to be watered slowly and deeply, meaning set the hose so the water drips out and let it sit there for an hour.  2.  Water multiple times.  And keep watering until the ground freezes.  This is especially true for new trees.  Let's hope we get a wet spell before we get snow!

Apples: Before and After

My three apple trees are looking healthy, but two of the three did not produce much this year.  That's okay, because my Haralson tree made up for it.  My daughter and I peeled and sliced most of the apples and made cinnamon applesauce.  Delicious! We used the old-fashioned, sit-on-the-counter apple peeler, and I cooked the apples over low heat with a dash of water, lots of cinnamon, and some sugar to take away the tart edge.  I have visions of the many containers of sauce lasting for months (insert laugh here).  We call our sauce "apple pie without the crust."

Gone, Baby, Gone

These lovely Earthwalker sunflowers are gone.  Yes , gone.  Some creature(s) pushed them over and ate them, the flowers, the seeds, everything except the very sturdy stalk.  I do believe that raccoons have struck again.  I have taken drastic measures (caging peapods, human hair among the peppers, cayenne pepper powder sprinkled everywhere) to protect the rest of my garden, but they have eaten the kinds of things they like--the pastries of the garden, so to speak--so I hope they will leave the rest. The flowers were looking fabulous with their warm colors and branching habit with multiple flowers per branch.  I guess they were tasty, too.