Leisure time?

Hello,

Leroy and I used to have leisure time. Somehow that is not the case anymore. Part of it is the gardens and the wonderful produce from it that demands attention one way or another. Now we are into getting apples from which I make applesauce or crisp. I canned seven more quarts of applesauce. The apples were from Brian or really they were from Jen’s father. I do know that when making cider these apples did not produce a lot of juice. When making the sauce I added water two or three times and still had trouble getting it to flow off the spoon and into the jars. Finally in desperation, I just forced it off with a spatula. We ate some of the extra sauce today and found that it tasted good even though it had unusual stiffness.

This morning Leroy and I took part in the neighborhood clean up along with Coe College students and their families. It was such an enjoyable morning to be out and about. Even though I do not like a trashy neighborhood it was satisfying to pick up quite a lot of things. However much of it was not lying around in the open, but tucked up in a copse of trees. I learned how to pronounce copse because even though I have read it more than once, I do not remember hearing anyone use the word before. So learning took place as well on this walk.

This afternoon Leroy and I have been just sitting around, except for a visit to the grocery store. I was happy to see that someone was putting throw away produce in a recycle container. When I commented on how good that was to compost it, he replied, “I agree, but we have to padlock it because otherwise people would come and take it out.”

A part of me wonders if some of the neighbors are hungry enough to eat what they can find in bins. If that is the case it is too bad that they cannot have access to it when it has just been put there. I suspect it is not at that point really unsafe for human consumption

Paula