Yesterday we picked three more big boxes of apples.  Two we are giving away and one box is for ourselves.  There is still lots of apples on our trees that will be picked in the next coming week.  We did have extremely strong winds yesterday with rain and frosty 30's temps last night.  I haven't been out to the orchard yet and am hoping we still have some apples left on our trees.

The plums weren't quite ripe as of yesterday and I'm really hoping the wind didn't blow them all off.  I'm afraid to look.

This morning I prepared a dehydrator with seven trays of sliced and cored apples.  We like our dried apples with the skins still on, so they are a little chewy.  I still have a tiny little bit of apples we dried several years ago.  They are still good, the flavor is remarkable.  Wish I could remember just how many gallon bags I filled with those dried apples so long ago.  We snack and nibble on them every once in a while.  I'd make apple pie but my daughter and I have quit eating bread, rolls, pie crust ... anything with flour.  Maybe I could make a crust out of some chopped nuts.  Hmmmmm, an interesting idea!  But it sure has helped us lose some weight.  Kind of hard though, no donuts, no sandwiches, no breading on chicken.  Oh well, I sure feel a lot better.  Its amazing.


The pool guy is coming tomorrow to close the pool down for the winter.  Our pool isn't heated so it does freeze in the winter time.  He drains and blows out the pump, cleans the filter and we put a tarp over the top.  Usually the wind will blow the tarp off so we end up draining it and doing a thorough cleaning job early in the spring before we fill it again for the summer.  We don't drain the pool any more in the fall because it fills up with just enough water from the snow and rain to turn green.  So we drain and clean it in the spring instead.  Its a lot of work but it always looks so nice and clean for the summer.

We're nearly done with our fall cleanup work.  Our temps have fallen into the very low 30's at night now and daytime temps aren't getting above about 70.  Its still nice though.  If it wasn't for the terrible fires around this area, Washington in particular, our skies would be the dark blue that is so nice in the fall.  If the wind is blowing away from us there's always just a tiny bit of wood smoke in the air that makes it really seem like fall.  We don't anticipate using much wood this year with our new heater.  WooHoo.  That's a lot of work and a very dirty way to stay warm.