These pictures were taken by my husband...it is the one and only time popcorn bloom happened during the 19 years I worked here. That is when all the trees bloom at the same time and every bloom opens at once....I had broken my leg and had on a walking cast so it was definitely too wet for me to get out in the orchard. It was absolutely one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever in my life witnessed. And wonder will I ever see it again.

I set and looked trying to decide if I know which rows of trees these are--I think the row on the left is red delicious and the row on the right is yellow delicious. As long as I worked there and as many trees as I had to climb down out of, you would think they would each and everyone have a name.



I will try to change subjects now...think I have just been missing the place and I for sure miss my boss. He passed away last year after a long----I don't know the word. He had a major stroke and was never the same. It happened in 2001, he lost his ability to walk, talk, eat. Yet his face just glowed with happiness when we were all in the house at lunch and talking and laughing. When he was well, it was always very entertaining...

He always sat and told tales of his childhood, or else told stories on his own children. Or tales of when he was an insurance salesman. I would give anything to have recorded the conversations. He has made me laugh till I was literally sick from laughing so hard. His daughter-in-law and I can still get to laughing over tales he told us...and they were all true is what makes them even funnier.

Now, to what is currently happening....it's another cold, cold day here in the midwest....I don't think it got out of the 20's the entire day. Of course that is not cold compared to some. Knowing that does not make me appreciate it any more.

I did sew quite a bit today on the baby quilt tops. I should have had them done but kept getting detoured by little things. For one thing I paid to download Norton 360 to my computer last night. Nothing is ever simple for me and this computer...it literally took a couple hours to do it. And it was NOT that it was slow to download. At first would not accept my name, email, etc. Had to go back and start from scratch more than once. Then I had to un-install some things. You name it, it will happen to me.

Then today every time I got on it seemed like the connections were taking so long. So I would fool around and look...found one article that stated that it did not support the
Firefox browser...don't know what the heck that means exactly. Finally wrote the tech support and I think it means basically that I have to have internet explorer as my default web browser to get the live updates. I had never changed that. And I haven't done anything different really, but it seems to be working better tonight. So maybe it was ISP having problems....

Hopefully tomorrow I will have pictures of the finished tops to post....if nothing else happens.

More from the orchard...
This first picture is Grand Prize plums...yummy!

The rest of the pictures are scanned in photos...the orchard I worked at was small. The owner went in business with a friend not far from the orchard. There we raised these beautiful blackberries, as well as strawberries, raspberries, watermelons, cantaloupe, pumpkins, decorative gourds, and we raised tomatoes one year. Oh, I forgot we had blueberries bushes that started baring fruit.

We planted these peach trees the first year I worked there year round. I don't remember how long it took to get this crop of peaches and nectarines...not very long at all. Out of probably 8 years it was the only crop that survived our harsh winters. Both my boss and the other guy had health issues; these trees along with five(eta: I don't know why I wrote five--it was more like 10 or 12 ) long, long rows of peach trees that his daughter-in-law and I bud-grafted were bulldozed out. The strawberry rows were plowed out...a sad but happy time for me in so many ways. The strawberries all had drip irrigation, and were planted on small ridges covered through the plastic film that has become popular here in the past years. The drip tube was buried in the ridge under the plastic film layer. One of my many jobs was to get the irrigation going once spring rolled around. The ground was almost pure sand so irrigation was a must. That was the chore that I was not going to miss. The first patch had 50 rows of strawberries that were 400 feet long, then we added to them each year. The rows added were 800 feet long though. I do miss working on the irrigation at all...the only way I survived it was to look at it as one giant puzzle!

I had to walk the row to the end and feel the end of the irrigation line to see if water was reaching the end. As many times as not, it wasn't. So then I would walk back and every so often dig down to find the plastic drip tube. When I found where the water was, then I had to figure out where the leak was--sometimes it was easy to find cause there would be a big, noticeable wet spot. But lots of times there were numerous places where mice had chewed, or maybe a deer had bounded through and the hoof sunk deep enough to cut the line. No, repairing irrigation lines is not my favorite job.

Sampling the fruit was never a chore--one of these peaches would not be a bad thing right now! Since I worked there, fruit bought in stores just never tastes quite as good. And apples are never as good as when you reach and pick one and eat it!