Zinnias and Applesauce, It Must Be Fall!

Finally, the garden zinnias are blooming profusely. Frost is just around the corner, but for now there are flowers enough for every occasion.
Old jars hung on nails and arranged full of flowers and grapevine make a perfect fall doorway decoration.
The other big plan for all these flowers is to dry them in silica gel. Visualize these mixed into our winter/Christmas swags. If that materializes, I'll show you here. I hope.
The girls and I set about making applesauce outside on Wednesday. Three bushels done, and five to go for next week.  The weather was awesome: crisp, the leaves starting to turn and fall is here. The yellow jackets thought the warm, sweet apple juice impossible to resist. More than one dive-bombed the hot sauce and died immediately.
We sat out on the patio to lunch savoring this particular feeling of lovely autumn around us. The children ran between us and riding their bikes and turning the strainer handle for brief moments. One of the babies experimented with rolling an acorn around in her mouth, getting rather dirty in the process.


Benny turned five that day, too.  I believe it feels amazing to be five to him. I remember, again, my fifth birthday each time someone in the family turns five.