Autumn Apples

One thing I love about where we live is that there are community apple trees in our town. There is a tree right behind my parent's house that we have been wanting to pick all year long and yesterday, we were finally able to. My parents' neighbor came up with a apple picking tool so we could reach the apples that were high up. He took a long pole and added a coffee can with a sharp lid. You reach the pole up to where the high apples are and get it in the can then you pull the pole so the apple stem will be cut by the sharp side of the can. It was so hard to do at first, but by the end of the day I was able to get 11 apples in the can at once...yeah! We have big plans for our apples...apple pie (my friend Becky has an amazing apple pie recipe) and mini caramel apples with homemade caramel sauce. Picking apples means that Autumn is here. I can tell by the crispy cool mornings now and the leaves that are slowly starting to change.

Blake loved picking apples...she would help hold the big ol' bucked we were using to collect the apples. When I started washing the apples, I found a few apples with bite marks in them...hmmm, I wonder how those got there, Blake.




Here is beautiful web I found at a neighbor's house while we were collecting apples. Now, I am not a fan of spiders. They are creepy and crawly and where we live, they are huge! Last night, when I was painting, I saw something moving on the floor out of the corner of my eye...yep, a humongous spider. I had to call Andy to come take care of it...of course it took off before we could do anything...yuck. But this web was so beautiful in the sunlight that I had to take a picture of it.